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THE    TEMPER    OF 

THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY 

IN    ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Clarft  l-ectures  given  at  Q;rinlts  College,  Cambridge 
in  tbe  Iffear  1902-1903 


BY 

BARRETT   WENDELL 

PROFESSOR    OF   ENGLISH    AT    HARV^ARD   COLLEGE 


NEW   YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1904 


Copyright,  1904,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published,  October,  1904 


TROW  DIBECTOBV 

PRINTING  «N0  BOOKBINDING  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 


PREFACE 

My  original  plan  for  the  lectures  contained  in  this 
book  would  have  made  them,  as  a  whole,  twice  as 
long  as  they  are.  I  meant  to  treat  the  second  half 
of  the  seventeenth  century  quite  as  fully  as  I  treated 
the  first.  The  circumstances  under  which  the  lectures 
were  given,  at  Trinity  College,  prevented  this.  The 
time  at  my  disposal  proved  so  limited  that  I  must 
either  greatly  condense  the  first  part  of  my  work  or 
else  frankly  change  the  scale  on  which  I  should  con- 
sider the  Age  of  Dryden.     I  chose  the  latter  course. 

Having  done  so,  I  thought  for  a  good  while  that, 
before  venturing  to  print  any  of  this  material,  I  had 
best  rewrite  it,  restoring  the  proportions  of  the  orig- 
inal plan.  Various  circumstances  have  prevented 
such  rewriting,  until  it  has  become  evident  that  the 
lectures  must  either  appear  as  they  were  given  or  not 
appear  at  all.  For  several  reasons,  the  former  course 
has  seemed  on  the  whole  preferable. 

In  the  first  place,  a  considerable  part  of  what  in- 
terest the  lectures  may  have  must  arise  from  the  fact 
that,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  they  are  the  first  regular 
lectures  concerning  English  literature  ever  given  by 


398 


Vi  PREFACE 

an  American  at  an  English  university.  To  alter  them 
would  be  in  some  degree  to  misrepresent  them. 

In  the  second  place,  these  lectures,  made  for  deliv- 
ery, not  to  students  but  to  a  popular  academic  audi- 
ence, are  naturally  rather  a  running  comment  on  the 
subject  in  question — a  series  of  essays — than  a  formal 
treatise.  To  turn  them  into  anything  like  a  severe 
and  comprehensive  form  would  be  at  once  the  work 
of  years  rather  than  of  months,  and  so  radical  an 
alteration  of  their  character  that,  whatever  the  result, 
they  would  no  longer  be  the  kind  of  thing  they  are. 

In  the  third  place,  and  by  far  chiefly,  they  seemed  to 
me  about  as  expressive  as  I  could  make  them  of  what 
I  wished  to  say.  For  my  purpose  was  not  to  write  a 
standard  history  of  English  literature  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  touching  on  every  man  and  work 
therein  included,  and  giving  to  each  of  these,  great 
and  small,  a  value  and  a  place  which  I  might  hope 
should  be  permanent.  My  purpose  was  only  to  indi- 
cate, as  best  I  could,  the  manner  in  which  the  national 
temper  of  England,  as  revealed  in  seventeenth-century 
literature,  changed  from  a  temper  ancestrally  com- 
mon to  modern  England  and  to  modern  America,  and 
became,  before  the  century  closed,  something  which 
later  time  must  recognize  as  distinctly,  specifically 
English.  Whether  these  lectures  make  my  view  of 
this  national  transformation  clear,  it  is  not  for  me  to 
judge;  but  I  feel  pretty  sure  that,  even  as  they  stand, 
they  make  it  as  clear  as  I  am  now  able  to.     In  this 


PREFACE  vii 

opinion  I  have  been  strengthened  by  the  experience  of 
the  year  which  has  intervened  since  the  lectures  were 
given.  During  that  year  I  have  treated  the  matters 
which  they  concern  in  my  regular  courses  of  instruc- 
tion at  Harvard  College.  In  these  courses,  the  scale 
was  naturally  much  larger  than  that  of  the  Clark  lect- 
ures, but  I  could  not  discover  that  this  enlargement 
of  scale  in  any  way  altered  the  main  outlines  of  my 
conception. 

It  is  perhaps  superfluous  to  say  that  any  such  treat- 
ment of  a  large  subject  as  I  have  here  attempted 
involves  no  special  study  of  other  than  obvious  au- 
thorities. Accordingly,  it  has  seemed  needless  to 
encumber  this  book  with  bibliographic  matter  or  with 
notes.  It  is  not  superfluous,  however,  to  add  here  a 
word  of  my  gratitude  to  the  friends  and  the  colleagues 
who  have  kindly  let  me  talk  with  them  about  the 
matters  in  question,  and  whose  suggestions  have  from 
time  to  time  been  deeply  helpful.  Among  these  friends 
I  cannot  refrain  from  naming  two :  Professor  William 
Allan  Neilson,  now  of  Columbia  University,  and  Dr. 
Chester  Noyes  Greenough,  until  very  lately  Instructor 
in  English  at  Harvard. 

Yet,  after  all,  the  friends  who  come  most  vividly 
to  mind  as  I  write  these  lines  are  not  the  old  friends 
of  our  New  England  Cambridge.  They  are  rather 
the  new  friends  who  welcomed  me  so  cordially  to 
their  own  Cambridge  two  years  ago.  In  the  lect- 
ures themselves,  I  have  said  something  of  what  that 


Vlll 


PREFACE 


welcome  meant  to  me;  it  was  not  only  a  personal 
experience  of  kindness  which  can  never  be  forgotten; 
it  was  a  constant  assurance  that  they  had  at  heart 
what  I  had  at  heart  too.  Loyal  Englishmen  can  never 
be  Americans,  nor  loyal  Americans  Englishmen;  but 
no  patriotic  loyalty  can  ever  af¥ect  the  truth  that  Eng- 
lishmen and  Americans  are  ancestrally  brethren.  And 
whoever  does  his  best  to  strengthen  the  sense  and  the 
ties  of  our  kinship  does  a  good  deed  for  the  future  of 
this  puzzling  world. 

To  name  these  new-found  friends  individually  would 
be  to  name  all  those  whom  I  had  the  good  fortune 
to  meet  during  my  pleasant  months  in  England. 
Among  them,  however,  is  one  group,  to  whom  I  owe 
most  of  all,  for  it  was  at  their  bidding  that  I  came  to 
the  deep  pleasure  which  those  months  brought  me. 
Had  chance  made  these  lectures  in  themselves  mem- 
orable enough  to  warrant  hope  that  they  deserved 
such  honor,  I  should  have  asked  leave  to  give  them  a 
formal  dedication.  And  that  dedication  could  have 
been  to  none  but  the  Master  and  Fellows  of  Trinity. 

Barrett  Wendell. 

Nahant,  Massachusetts,  July  15,  1904. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.    Elizabethan   Literature i 

II.   The  Disintegration  of  the  Drama     ...     46 

III.  The  Decline  of  the  Drama 74 

IV.  The  Divergent  Masters  of  Lyric  Poetry  .   loi 

V.   The  Disintegration  of  Lyric  Poetry     .     .128 

VI.   The  Development  of  Prose 155 

The  Bible  and  Bacon. 

VII.    The  Development  of  Prose 184 

Ralegh,  Burton  and  Browne. 

VIII.    The  Earlier  Puritanism 207 

IX.    The  Later  Puritanism 237 

X.    Milton   Before  the   Civil  Wars     ....  267 

XL    The  Maturity  of  Milton 302 

XII.    The  Age  of  Dryden 327 

INDEX 357 


THE    TEMPER    OF 

THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY 

IN    ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

I 

ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE 

It  is  hard,  they  say,  for  any  European  to  under- 
stand what  Europe  means  to  an  American.  We  Amer- 
icans are  separated  from  the  Old  World  by  eight  or 
ten  generations.  We  have  no  more  personal  tradi- 
tions of  the  regions  from  which  our  ancestors  sailed 
westward  in  the  seventeenth  century  than  Englishmen 
have  of  the  Continental  lowlands  which  bred  the 
Angles  and  the  Saxons.  Yet  our  historical  traditions 
are  so  closely  intertwined  with  those  of  ancestral 
Europe — and  of  England  beyond  the  rest — that  we 
cannot  feel  ourselves  a  race  apart.  Hawthorne  spoke 
for  us  all  when  he  called  England  "our  old  home." 

So  the  kind  invitation  which  summoned  me  from 
Cambridge  in  New  England  to  the  Cambridge  from 
which  ours  derived  not  only  its  traditions  but  its 
very  name,  brought  me  a  pleasure  which  none  but 
an  American  can  fully  know.    It  was  deeper  than  that 


2  THE   SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

which  must  always  come  from  welcome  to  a  strange 
yet  friendly  land;  deeper,  too,  than  that  which  my 
countrymen  must  always  feel  in  the  immemorial  hu- 
manity of  Europe.  It  combined  them ;  and,  more  than 
all,  it  touched  the  heart,  like  the  pleasure  which  should 
come  from  mutual  recognition  of  a  kinship  for  a  while 
half  forgotten. 

At  the  same  time,  like  other  earthly  delights,  this 
pleasure  was  not  flawless.  It  involved  the  grim  real- 
ity of  duties.  Among  them  none  was  more  pressing 
than  that  of  choosing  the  period  in  the  literature  of 
England  concerning  which,  as  an  American,  I  might 
but  speak  to  Englishmen.  My  choice  was  soon  made ; 
but  the  subject  of  it — The  Seventeenth  Century  in 
English  Literature — may  well  have  seemed  so  far 
from  novel  as  to  give  rise  to  apprehensive  wonder 
whether  there  was  anything  left  to  say  about  it.  If 
it  be  in  my  power  to  quiet  such  apprehension,  I  may 
best  do  so  by  telling  why  I  chose  such  a  disconcert- 
ing topic. 

Literature,  in  the  first  place,  is  so  comprehensive 
a  term  that  anyone  who  habitually  uses  it  can  hardly 
help,  after  a  while,  unconsciously  giving  it  some  spe- 
cial meaning  of  his  own.  As  nearly  as  I  can  define 
what  literature  has  come  to  mean  for  me,  it  may  be 
called  the  lasting  expression  in  words  of  the  meaning 
of  life.  Any  such  definition  must  be  vague;  but  even 
from  this  vague  phrase,  you  will  perhaps  begin  to  feel 
the  first  article  of  faith  w^hich  I  have  striven  to  in- 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  3 

elude  in  it ;  namely,  that  the  most  significant  literature 
is  that  which  the  spontaneous  selection  of  posterity 
has  kept  alive  from  generation  to  generation — the  great 
men  first,  whom  everybody  knows;  the  lesser  men 
next,  whom  everybody  remembers ;  and  only  very  sub- 
ordinately  the  numberless  men  whom  most  people  have 
contentedly  forgotten.  In  studying  any  subject  what- 
ever, we  have  to  simplify  it  by  neglect  of  countless, 
bewildering  details ;  and  on  the  whole  those  which  we 
may  most  confidently  neglect  are  those  which  the  hu- 
man race  has  obviously  been  able  to  do  without.  Our 
definition  of  literature  will  accordingly  confine  our 
attention  as  students  to  men  and  works  which  are 
more  or  less  familiar. 

Our  next  question  is  how  we  should  consider  them. 
In  this  scientific  age,  the  orthodox  way  is  doubtless 
to  deal  with  them  as  facts,  inquiring  what  influences 
and  what  surroundings  produced  this  book  or  that, 
and  answering  such  inquiries  with  a  precision  which 
shall  delight  people  who  have  to  cram  certainties  for 
purposes  of  competitive  examination.  What  is  more, 
one  cannot  speak  too  respectfully  of  this  admirable 
orthodoxy ;  for  it  has  brought  an  approach  to  rational 
order  out  of  what  was  lately  a  sentimental  chaos. 
Yet  I  shall  not  follow  its  methods.  For,  having 
grown  to  think  of  literature  not  only  as  a  lasting 
expression,  but  as  a  lasting  expression  of  the  meaning 
of  life,  I  have  grown  to  care  for  it  mostly,  not  as  an 
historical  fact  nor  yet  as  an  aesthetic,  but  rather  as  a 


4  THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

temperamental.  The  literature  of  any  nation  may  be 
likened  to  the  talk  or  to  the  letters  of  men  we  know. 
What  we  come  to  care  for  in  our  friends  is  not  their 
circui"hstances  but  themselves ;  and  we  feel  that  we 
confidently  know  them  not  when  we  can  glibly  state 
facts  about  them,  but  when,  with  such  indefinable  cer- 
tainty as  assures  us  of  the  savor  of  a  fruit  or  the  scent 
of  a  flower,  we  can  instinctively  recognize  in  each  the 
qualities  which  are  peculiarly  his  own.  So  a  litera- 
ture seems  to  me  most  interesting,  and  most  signifi- 
cant, when  we  consider  it  as  the  unconscious  expres- 
sion of  national  temper. 

A  cant  phrase  that  last  may  seem — at  best  elusive; 
yet  few  have  more  meaning.  As  history  unfolds  itself, 
one  grows  to  feel,  it  reveals  nothing  which  may  better 
give  us  pause  than  the  wonderfully  various  characters 
of  the  nations  who  in  turn  rise  and  flourish  and  de- 
cline. Though  these  characters  express  themselves  in 
widely  various  ways, — in  conduct,  in  policy,  in  social 
or  economic  peculiarities,  in  plastic  art, — there  is  no 
other  phase  of  this  expression  quite  so  habitual,  and 
therefore  quite  so  surely  characteristic,  as  that  which 
takes  the  form  of  language.  It  is  by  means  of  lan- 
guage, incalculably  more  than  by  any  other,  that  men 
not  only  communicate  with  one  another  but  commune 
with  their  very  selves.  A  common  language,  one 
grows  to  feel,  is  a  closer  bond  than  common  blood. 
For  at  heart  the  truest  community  which  men  can 
know  is  community  of  ideals;  and  inextricably  inter- 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  5 

woven  with  the  structure  of  any  language — with  its 
words,  with  its  idioms,  with  its  syntax,  and  nowadays 
even  with  its  very  orthography — are  the  ideals  which, 
recognized  or  not,  have  animated  and  shall  animate 
to  the  end  those  who  instinctively  phrase  their  earthly 
experience  in  its  terms. 

By  happy  chance,  England  and  America  think  and 
speak  in  a  common  language.  However  Englishmen 
and  Americans  may  differ,  accordingly,  they  have 
never  yet  differed  when,  in  simplicity  of  heart,  they 
have  tried  to  state  to  themselves  their  ideals  of  duty. 
Morally,  we  both  agree,  we  are  bound,  with  what 
power  is  in  us,  to  do  right;  and  by  doing  right  we 
mean,  whether  we  quite  know  it  or  not,  what  mil- 
lions of  our  forefathers  have  meant  by  obeying  the 
will  of  God;  and  furthermore,  whatever  our  personal 
convictions,  we  cannot  escape  that  heritage  of  our 
common  speech  which  accepts  as  guides  to  righteous- 
ness so  many  of  the  consecrated  phrases  of  the  Eng- 
lish Bible.  Politically,  the  while,  we  are  at  one  in 
believing  that  our  chief  duty  is  to  maintain  our  rights ; 
and  by  rights  we  mean  no  untested  abstractions,  but 
those  freedoms,  on  which  no  power  may  encroach  un- 
resisted, secured  us  by  the  unwritten  and  the  written 
principles  of  ancestral  English  law. 

Yet,  whoever  should  conclude  from  this  that  Eng- 
land and  America  are  all  at  one,  or  have  been  so,  for 
these  two  centuries  at  least,  would  let  his  logic  belie 
history.     Neither  our  common  language  nor  the  con- 


6  THE   SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

sequent  identity  of  our  moral  and  political  ideals  have 
preserved  our  national  tempers  from  a  divergence 
which  began  almost  as  soon  as  the  American  colonies 
were  settled.  To-day  there  has  come  to  us  a  world- 
need  of  closer  union,  of  better  mutual  understanding, 
than  has  been  ours  in  the  past.  That  need,  I  believe, 
will  grow  more  pressing  in  days  to  come.  You  will 
see  whither  these  considerations  have  led  me.  Bidden 
to  choose  the  period  in  the  literature  of  England  which 
we  might  but  consider  together,  I  could  not  fail  to 
ask  myself  at  once  what  period  might  most  help  us 
— of  England  and  of  America  alike — to  understand 
each  other.  And  thus  my  choice  fell  inevitably  on  the 
seventeenth  century. 

For,  in  1600  there  was  no  America  at  all.  Your 
ancestors  and  ours  were  Englishmen,  subject  to  Queen 
Elizabeth.  Broadly  speaking,  we  may  say  that  the 
colony  of  Virginia  was  finally  settled  about  1610;  that 
the  Pilgrims  made  their  landing  at  Plymouth  in  1620; 
and  that  the  neighboring  colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay 
had  founded  its  capital  city  of  Boston  by  1630.  From 
these  three  sources,  it  is  commonly  agreed,  have  flowed 
the  streams  of  tradition — the  intellectual,  the  moral, 
the  political  ideals — which  have  nurtured  the  national 
temper  of  America.  It  was  clearly  in  the  first  third 
of  the  seventeenth  century — in  years  when  every  man 
of  mature  age  had  been  born  under  Queen  Elizabeth 
— that  these  streams  parted  from  those  which  have 
nurtured  the  national  temper  of  modern  England. 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  7 

Again,  this  parting,  which  has  led  to  the  divergence 
of  our  national  tempers,  may  be  likened  to  a  parting 
of  friends  who  presently  become  in  some  degree  es- 
tranged. If  they  have  ever  been  at  one,  it  is  clear 
that  when  divergence  grows  insuperable  one  or  the 
other  must  have  suffered  change.  Accordingly,  those 
who  have  recognized  how  England  and  America  have 
tended  apart,  have  been  apt  to  assume  that  in  England 
the  temper  of  our  ancestral  race  has  remained  little 
altered,  while  in  the  virgin  soil  of  our  new  continent 
our  transplanted  shoots  have  run  into  wildly  different 
luxuriances  of  their  own.  The  terms  of  the  Clark 
Lectureship  restrict  us  to  the  literature  of  England. 
I  shall  barely  mention,  accordingly,  a  fact  in  the  lit- 
erary history  of  the  seventeenth-century  America 
which  is  hardly  in  accordance  with  this  general  as- 
sumption concerning  American  development.  Through- 
out the  seventeenth  century,  American  publications 
were  so  monotonous,  in  body  and  in  soul,  that  with- 
out constant  reference  to  title-pages  no  human  being 
could  guess  whether  a  given  paragraph  was  written 
by  an  Elizabethan  or  by  his  godly  grandchildren  un- 
der King  William  III.  During  that  same  century,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  literary  records  of  England  tell 
a  very  different  story.  In  1600,  Shakspere  was  at 
the  height  of  his  productive  power;  in  1650,  Milton 
had  for  ten  years  been  a  writer  chiefly  of  controversial 
prose;  in  1700,  John  Dryden  died,  having  crowned 
his   critical   work   with  the  masterly  preface  to  his 


8  THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

recklessly  collected  folio  of  Fables.  That  seventeenth 
century,  in  brief,  when  the  streams  of  our  national 
lives  first  parted,  proves  in  America  a  period  of  al- 
most stationary  national  temper;  in  England,  the 
v^hile,  the  temper  of  the  nation,  as  expressed  by  liter- 
ature, underwent  the  most  conspicuous  change  in  all 
its  history. 

For  Shakspere  was  a  man  of  his  time;  and  equally 
a  man  of  his  time  was  Dryden;  and  both  flourished 
and  died  during  the  century  which  we  are  to  consider 
together.  Yet  Shakspere  has  more  in  common  with 
Chaucer,  who  died  in  1400,  than  with  Dryden,  who 
w^as  born  only  fifteen  years  after  the  greatest  of  mod- 
ern poets  was  laid  under  his  quaint  epitaph  in  Strat- 
ford Church;  and  Dryden  has  less  in  common  with 
Shakspere  than  with  countless  other  writers  of 
sound  prose  who  have  illustrated  the  reign  of  Queen 
Victoria.  One  may  carry  the  contrast  further.  It  is 
hardly  excessive  to  say  that  every  vestige  of  English 
literature  before  1600  may  naturally  be  grouped  to- 
gether, with  the  literature  before  the  Civil  Wars;  and 
that  every  record  of  English  literature  since  1700  may, 
with  equal  good  sense,  be  grouped  together,  with  the 
literature  since  the  Restoration.  We  can  begin  to  see 
why  to  anyone  who  desires  to  consider  how  the  na- 
tional tempers  of  England  and  of  America  have 
diverged,  there  is  no  other  period  of  English  litera- 
ture so  instructive  as  this  seventeenth  century.  For 
during  that  century,  the  temper  of  England,  as  ex- 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  9 

pressed  in  literature,  underwent  such  a  change  as 
comes  to  human  beings  when  they  suddenly  lapse  from 
childhood  to  youth,  from  youth  to  maturity,  or  from 
maturity  to  age. 

In  the  hours  which  we  are  to  pass  together,  I  shall 
accordingly  try  to  tell  you  how  this  period  has  ap- 
peared to  an  American  who,  with  no  too  toilsome 
study,  has  been  reading  and  pondering  about  it,  at 
Harvard  College,  for  a  good  many  years.  First  I 
shall  try  to  set  forth  the  state  of  English  literature 
in  1600,  when  the  century  began.  Then  I  shall  try 
to  show  how  the  temper  of  this  elder  time  altered ; 
how  the  drama  declined;  how  lyric  poetry  disinte- 
grated; how  prose  tended  on  the  whole  to  develop; 
and  how  beneath  this  various  change  there  was  surg- 
ing toward  the  surface  of  national  life  a  force  which 
never  found  full  literary  expression — the  passionate 
idealism  of  the  Puritans.  I  shall  then  turn  to  the 
earlier  poems  of  Milton,  which  in  some  aspects  sum- 
marize this  part  of  the  story.  Then  I  shall  touch  on 
Milton's  prose  and  on  his  later  and  greater  poems; 
and  finally,  in  more  cursory  manner,  I  shall  glance  at 
the  further  course  of  seventeenth-century  literature 
in  England,  until  the  death  of  Dryden  brings  its  story 
to  an  end. 


Our  first  business,  we  have  seen,  is  to  render  our- 
selves  some  account   of  the  state  in   vvhich   English 


lo        THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

literature  appeared  when  the  century  we  are  to  con- 
sider began.  In  1600  the  reign  of  Queen  EHzabeth 
was  drawing  to  its  close;  and  to  that  reign  we  owe 
almost  all  of  what  is  now  treasured,  from  years  be- 
fore 1600,  as  the  modern  literature  of  England.  When 
Elizabeth  came  to  the  throne,  the  work  of  Chaucer 
was  already  wdiat  it  seems  to  us — the  sole  survivor 
of  an  archaic  elder  time.  Between  Chaucer's  death, 
in  1400,  and  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  al- 
most the  only  English  publications  which  have  lasted 
were  Sir  Thomas  Malory's  version  of  the  Arthurian 
legends ;  sundry  ballads  which — for  all  their  perennial 
vitality — had  hardly  risen  above  the  condition  of  folk- 
song; the  "Utopia"  of  Sir  Thomas  More;  and  the 
earlier  versions  of  those  wonderful  translations  which 
finally  ripened  into  the  Authorized  Version  of  the 
Bible  and  into  the  supreme  liturgical  rhythm  of  the 
Book  of  Common  Prayer.  It  is  hardly  by  figure  of 
speech  that  we  call  the  first  period  of  modern  English 
literature  Elizabethan.  Only  a  year  before  the  acces- 
sion of  the  great  queen  came  the  book  which  is  com- 
monly agreed  to  mark  when  modern  English  literature 
began. 

This  was  the  collection  of  "Songes  and  Sonettes," 
generally  called  "Tottel's  Miscellany."  It  finally  put 
into  the  accessible  permanence  of  print  a  considerable 
number  of  the  verses,  hitherto  existing  only  in  manu- 
script, which  for  many  years  previously  had  been  ha- 
bitually made  by  accomplished  men  of  fashion.     The 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  ii 

two  of  these  poets  who  were  personally  most  emhient, 
and  so  whose  names  are  most  frequently  associated 
with  the  little  volume,  were  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  and 
the  Earl  of  Surrey,  both  of  whom  had  died  under 
King  Henry  VIII.  During  the  last  century  or  so, 
the  poems  of  each  have  been  separately  collected  and 
annotated  more  than  once;  and  if  we  chose  to  study 
each  by  himself  we  could  easily  discover  in  each  a 
distinct  individuality.  For  the  moment,  however,  it 
is  better  worth  our  while  to  observe  that  as  their 
verses  appeared  in  the  first  of  English  poetical  miscel- 
lanies, they  seem  neither  sharply  distinguished  from 
each  other  nor  yet  saliently  different  from  those  of 
the  other  poets  whose  work  completes  the  volume. 
All  this  poetical  expression  evidently  sprang  from  men 
of  freshly  awakened  perception.  One  and  all  of  these 
men  were  youthfully  sensitive  to  the  beauties  and  the 
graces  of  foreign  literatures  which  they  had  only  just 
learned  to  know ;  all  were  eager  to  prove  whether  the 
untamed  language  of  their  still  uncultured  country 
was  capable,  or  not,  of  such  effects  as  had  already 
been  achieved  by  the  revived  civilization  of  Italy  and 
of  France.  In  sum,  their  effort  was  to  domesticate 
in  English  the  exotic  beauties  of  Continental  poetry. 
Accordingly  they  never  dreamed  of  what  we  should 
now  call  invention ;  they  translated,  they  adapted,  they 
imitated;  they  were  frankly,  spontaneously  experi- 
mental ;  and  their  experiments  never  quite  attained  the 
ease  of  mastery. 


12         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

Already,  however,  these  experiments  had  revealed 
two  facts.  Certain  foreign  forms  which  they  at- 
tempted proved  unmanageable  in  English.  Others 
showed  instant  sign  that  they  might  soon  flourish. 
Of  these,  the  most  noteworthy  was  the  sonnet.  Eng- 
lish is  so  far  less  rich  in  rhyme  than  the  Latin  tongues 
amid  which  this  elaborate  species  of  verse  first  ap- 
peared that  one  might  have  expected  failure.  The 
rapid  development  of  the  English  sonnet  came  from 
the  fact  that  its  ten-syllabled  line — the  line  of  Chaucer 
in  the  old  days,  of  blank-verse  later,  and  of  the  heroic 
couplet — happens  to  be  very  like  the  normal  rhythm 
of  English  speech.  That  line,  in  brief,  proved  idio- 
matic; so  did  certain  other  verse-forms  which  the 
early  Elizabethans  attempted — forms  which  resembled 
the  spontaneously  idiomatic  rhythm  of  the  popular 
native  ballads.  If  "Tottel's  Miscellany"  had  proved 
nothing  more,  it  would  have  proved  that  English 
verse  had  reached  a  point  where  it  would  soon 
develop  idiomatic  forms.  But  the  "Miscellany" 
proved  another  fact  more  important  still.  This  hith- 
erto untamed  English  had  doubtless  possessed  wild 
beauties,  such  as  even  Sidney  says  he  found  in  the 
artless  ballads  which  stirred  him  like  a  trumpet. 
Hitherto,  however,  English  had  hardly  been  proved 
capable  of  deliberate  lyric  effect.  Now,  in  the 
hands  of  these  enthusiastic  makers  of  poetic  experi- 
ment, the  language  instantly  revealed  the  lyric  power 
long  since  acknowledged.    Quite  apart  from  all  ques- 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  13 

tions  of  form  or  of  substance,  English  words,  in 
immortal  collocation,  proved  capable  of  exciting  such 
impalpable,  unmistakable  delight  as  springs  from  the 
beauties  of  untrammelled  music. 

From  this  beginning  there  had  grown  before  1600, 
a  seemingly  inexhaustible  luxuriance  of  lyric  poetry. 
In  1550,  except  for  popular  songs  and  experimental 
manuscripts,  there  was  hardly  such  a  thing  as  an 
English  lyric.  In  1600,  the  wealth  of  our  lyric  verse 
was  such  that  if  the  period  of  Elizabeth  had  achieved 
nothing  else,  it  would  always  have  been  memorable 
in  literary  history. 

At  first,  as  we  have  seen,  this  lyric  verse  was  ob- 
viously experimental.  Before  long,  however,  it  so 
strengthened  that  one  constantly  forgets  its  relations 
to  the  other  literatures  which  it  still  imitated.  Still 
experimental  in  truth,  it  flows  so  freely  that  there  is 
little  trace  left  of  consciousness,  of  deliberation.  Take 
any  familiar  collection  of  true  Elizabethan  lyrics — the 
first  Book  of  Palgrave's  "Golden  Treasury,"  for  ex- 
ample. You  will  feel  first  their  beauty,  and  next  what 
seems  their  inexhaustible  spontaneity.  You  will  never 
stop  to  wonder  from  what  foreign  model  this  lovely 
phrase  or  that — this  or  that  grace  of  rhythm — may 
have  been  copied.  You  will  be  content  to  linger 
awhile  in  a  world  of  fathomless  music. 

When  the  seventeenth  century  began,  this  music  was 
at  its  height.  Various  notes,  no  doubt,  were  begin- 
ning to  sound  apart  from  the  rest ;  but  one  thinks  first 


14         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

not  of  impending  variety — rather  of  the  still  palpable 
integrity  of  lyric  temper.  And  in  this  aspect  the  lyrics 
of  Elizabethan  England  were  typical  of  all  the  litera- 
ture about  them. 

Before  1550,  for  example, — apart  from  the  Prayer 
Book  and  the  ripening  translations  of  the  Bible, — there 
was  in  print  very  little  English  prose  which  has 
proved  lasting.  Just  as  our  language  had  not  yet 
asserted  its  lyric  power,  it  had  not  yet  declared  itself 
efficient  for  anything  much  higher  than  every-day  use. 
Until  well  after  1600,  for  that  matter,  English  prose 
was  rarely  used  for  other  than  practical  purposes — 
information  or  instruction.  Yet  one  has  only  to  re- 
call a  few  familiar  names  to  be  reminded  of  what 
Elizabethan  prose  had  already  achieved.  Foxe  had 
published  that  grim  "Book  of  Martyrs"  which  was  so 
long  to  stimulate  the  ardors  of  extreme  Protestantism, 
and  a  generation  later  Hooker  had  set  forth  the  greater 
part  of  his  sweetly  reasonable  plea  for  the  Church  of 
England.  Hakluyt  was  collecting  those  records  of 
exploration  and  adventure  which  tell  how  the  old 
hemispheric  world  was  rounding  into  our  own  plan- 
etary one.  Chronicles,  like  those  of  Stowe  and  of 
Holinshed,  stirred  conscious  patriotism  by  placing 
within  reach  of  all  who  would  read,  or  listen,  the 
legendary  and  recorded  facts  of  national  history. 
There  were  translations  from  the  classics,  too, — the 
best,  perhaps,  Sir  Thomas  North's  "Plutarch," — 
which  were  opening  anew  the  whole  world  of  ancient 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  15 

tradition,  fresh  again,  for  the  while,  with  a  noveUy  as 
alluring  as  that  of  the  future  continents  in  the  western 
seas.  And  there  were  translations  as  well  from  mod- 
ern literatures — chap-books  some  of  them,  others  col- 
lected in  such  treasuries  as  Painter's  "Palace  of  Pleas- 
ure."    The  hasty  list  is  already  long  enough. 

By  1600,  it  assures  us,  English  prose  was  already 
alive;  and  this  prose  had  set  forth,  in  abundance,  the 
motives  which  were  awakening  England  and  English 
literature  into  their  full  national  integrity.  The  rec- 
ords of  the  voyagers  told  how  the  old  bounds  of  the 
physical  world  were  broken — how  there  was  more 
than  men  could  know  or  dream  of  beyond  the  pillars 
of  Hercules.  The  chronicles  implicitly  asserted  how 
England  had  its  own  history — its  heroes,  its  national 
traditions,  its  inevitable  policies  to  come.  The  folios 
of  Foxe,  chained  with  the  Bible  in  the  churches,  as- 
serted the  most  extreme  doctrines  of  the  Reformation. 
The  translations  from  elder  literatures  asserted  mean- 
w'hile  the  wide-spread  spirit  of  the  Renaissance — wnth 
all  its  inspiration  from  antiquity  and  all  its  freshly 
pagan  humanism. 

This  spirit,  indeed — the  spirit  which  most  animated 
lyric  verse — was  the  most  pervasive  of  all.  Through- 
out Elizabethan  prose  one  feels  a  quality  of  sponta- 
neity, of  eager  experiment,  like  that  which  one  can  feel 
in  Elizabethan  poetry.  Like  the  poetry,  too,  that  prose 
had  not  yet  reached  a  stage  where  one  can  instantly 
feel  the  divergence  of  individual  styles.     It  had  a  fine 


i6         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

integrity  of  its  own,  so  like  the  integrity  of  the  verse 
that  as  one  considers  them  together  one  feels  the  prose 
fall  into  deep  harmonic  chords,  strengthening  and  de- 
fining the  spontaneous  lyric  music  which  soars  above 
them. 

It  was  amid  this  environment  of  strengthening  lyric 
poetr}^  and  of  increasingly  vital  prose  that  the  master- 
pieces of  true  Elizabethan  literature  grew  into  being. 
On  these  we  must  dwell  a  little  more  carefully, — on 
Lily's  work  and  Sidney's,  on  the  swiftly  greater 
achievements  of  Spenser,  and  on  the  wonderful  de- 
velopment of  the  English  drama.  Yet  before  pro- 
ceeding to  them,  we  may  well  stop  to  remark  a  fact 
which  their  very  names  would  imply.  Though,  in 
various  ways  of  their  own,  Lily  and  Sidney  and  Spen- 
ser, and  even  the  dramatists,  set  forth  moods  which  on 
scrutiny  prove  Protestant,  any  careless  reader  might 
scan  them  from  end  tO'  end  with  little  reminder  of  the 
Reformation.  So,  too,  a  careless  ear  might  listen  long 
to  the  multitude  of  lyric  poets  with  no  suspicion  that 
the  morning  air  about  them  was  charged  with  ele- 
ments which  were  to  concentrate  in  the  earthly  aus- 
terities and  the  heavenly  ecstasies  of  the  English  Puri- 
tans. Even  the  prose  at  which  we  glanced  contained 
only  one  work  which  inevitably  suggests  Puritanism, 
and  that  is  Foxe's  "Martyrs,"  published  as  early  as 
1563,  and  so  comprehensive  in  its  Protestantism  as 
to  have  been  welcome  even  at  Little  Gidding.  The 
conclusion  which  would  follow  from  these  hasty  facts 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  17 

is  really  true.  As  a  record  of  English  temper,  Eliza- 
bethan literature  has  one  deep  defect;  for,  at  least  in 
lasting  literature,  Elizabethan  Puritanism  was  inar- 
ticulate. 

Yet,  if  we  were  studying  together,  not  the  litera- 
ture of  this  period  but  its  history,  Puritanism  would 
be  the  phase  of  English  temper  on  which  we  might 
perhaps  be  forced  to  dwell  most  of  all.  And  even  our 
consideration  of  the  national  temper  of  England,  as 
expressed  in  literature,  cannot  neglect  it.  For  the 
moment,  however,  all  we  need  remember  is  that  while 
other  phases  of  this  national  temper  began  to  find 
lasting  literary  expression,  Puritanism,  for  all  the 
voluminousness  of  its  homiletic  and  controversial 
utterance,  remained  only  evanescently  articulate.  The 
phases  of  expression,  on  the  other  hand,  which  really 
ripened  in  the  last  years  of  the  sixteenth  century — 
which  by  1600  were  articulately  developed — were  one 
or  two  kinds  of  deliberately  artistic  literature,  in  both 
prose  and  verse,  and  above  all  the  drama. 

Neglecting  lesser  men,  there  are  certainly  three 
so  eminent  in  the  history  of  deliberate  literature, 
apart  from  the  drama,  that  we  cannot  neglect  them: 
these  are  Lily,  Sidney,  and  Spenser.  Virtually  of 
the  same  age — all  three  born  between  1552  and 
1554 — they  chance  to  mark  three  distinct  phases 
in  the  swift  development  of  Elizabethan  litera- 
ture during  the  years  of  their  maturity.  Of  these 
three  phases,   that   marked   by   Lily   is   the  earliest. 


i8         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

Apart  from  his  little  lyric,  "Cupid  and  Campaspe," 
hardly  a  line  of  his  work  has  survived  in  general 
memory.  But  in  its  own  day,  his  "Euphues"  was 
by  far  the  most  popular  book  which  had  ever  ap- 
peared in  English;  and,  indeed,  it  has  given  our  lan- 
guage a  generic  term — Euphuism — still  used  to  define 
the  quality  of  a  style  over-burdened  with  fantastic, 
affected  prettiness. 

Modern  scholarship  has  demonstrated  that  "Eu- 
phues"  was  far  from  original.  The  demonstration 
was  hardly  needful;  in  our  modern,  individualistic 
sense,  no  Elizabethan  man  of  letters  troubled  his  wits 
or  his  conscience  about  originality.  The  men  of  that 
happy  elder  time  were  not  so  self-conscious  as  to 
crave  self-expression  for  its  own  sake,  nor  yet  so 
squeamish  as  to  have  any  more  scruple  than  a  mod- 
ern man  of  science  against  appropriating  and  using 
whatever  had  anywhere  been  published  by  anyone  else. 
So,  no  doubt,  "Euphues"  was  closely  modelled  on  a 
kind  of  fantastic  literature  at  one  time  fashionable  in 
Spain,  in  Italy,  and  elsewhere;  and,  no  doubt,  too,  it 
was  far  from  the  first  English  work  of  its  kind.  If 
we  desire,  indeed,  to  make  sure  of  precisely  what 
Euphuism  was,  as  distinguished  from  anything  else, 
we  must  analyze  it  with  distressing  minuteness. 
"When  we  find  this  parisonic  antithesis,"  writes  a 
studious  German,  who  has  devoted  previous  pages  to 
demonstrating  what  Euphuism  was  not, — "When  we 
find  this  parisonic  antithesis  with  transverse  allitera- 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  19 

tion  and  consonance,  these  endless  comparisons  from 
nature,  and  that  predilection  for  allusions  and  exam- 
ples from  ancient  mythology,  history,  and  literature, 
we  may  say  we  have  Euphuism."  Very  true;  and 
yet,  until  we  can  make  ourselves  understand  how  all 
this  extravagance  delighted,  instead  of  boring,  the 
world  to  which  it  was  addressed,  we  can  have  no  idea 
of  what  Euphuism  meant. 

"Euphues"  pretends  to  be  a  novel.  But  it  has  no 
particular  plot,  no  vestige  of  character,  no  trace  of 
atmosphere  or  background ;  nothing,  in  short,  but  ex- 
traordinary and  inexhaustible  ingenuity  of  phrase. 
Sometimes  this  takes  the  form  of  epigram  or  aphor- 
ism— never  remarkable  for  other  than  trite  wisdom; 
oftener  it  is  a  mere  question  of  extravagant  fantasy 
in  combination  of  words.  The  one  indubitable,  per- 
vasive fact  about  the  style  of  Lily  is  that  almost  every 
sentence  is  turned  in  a  deliberately  unexpected  way. 
And  the  one  and  only  conceivable  human  appetite  to 
which  such  a  style  could  ever  have  appealed  is  an 
unslaked  thirst  for  novelty.  Euphuism,  in  short,  with 
its  swift  and  wide  popularity,  is  only  another  evidence 
of  that  eager  delight  in  experiment  which  we  found, 
a  little  while  ago,  so  deeply  characteristic  of  Eliza- 
bethan lyrics.  The  world  which  welcomed  it  was  an 
almost  child-like  world,  loving  novelty  so  eagerly  that 
even  verbal  novelty  was  an  unaffected  delight.  For 
this  merely  verbal  novelty  revealed  to  Elizabethan 
readers  a  fact  then  quite  new :  it  proved  that  their  own 


20         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

English  language,  hitherto  not  more  than  a  useful 
thing,  was  capable  of  something  more.  This  English, 
it  told  them,  can  in  itself  delight  us;  listen,  there  is 
no  reason  why  we  should  not  thus  be  delighted  for- 
ever. 

Except,  of  course,  that  novelties  go  out  of  fashion 
almost  as  swiftly  as  they  come  into  the  same.  And 
Lily,  who  had  the  precious  faculty  of  instinctively 
feeling  what  his  public  would  welcome,  rested  content 
with  the  two  parts  of  his  "Euphues" — the  first  pub- 
lished in  1579,  the  second  a  year  later.  From  that 
time  on  he  stopped  writing  novels,  and  turned  himself 
to  plays.  We  shall  revert  to  him  wdien  we  come  to 
the  drama.     Now  we  must  speed  on  to  Sidney. 

For,  even  if  Sidney's  accidents  of  birth,  of  circum- 
stance, of  happily  heroic  and  premature  death,  had 
not  made  him  a  national  hero,  he  would  have  remained 
memorable  in  mere  literature.  He  had  the  divine 
gift  of  fascination,  of  personal  charm.  His  best- 
remembered  work  is  the  "Defence  of  Poesie,"  in  which 
he  so  courteously  answered  the  Puritan,  Gosson,  who 
had  presumptuously  dedicated  to  him  a  rather  scurril- 
ous attack  on  all  fine  art.  Sidney's  "Defence"  has 
obvious  limits;  just  at  the  moment  when  the  Eliza- 
bethan drama  w^as  dawning,  for  example,  it  pedantic- 
ally asserts  principles  which  would  have  made  the 
career  of  Shakspere  impossible.  Nevertheless,  the 
book  can  still  give  pleasure.  You  take  it  up  as  a 
student.     Before  you  are  aware  that  your  mood  has 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  21 

begun  to  change,  you  find  yourself  turning  the  pages 
as  a  reader,  hardly  disposed  to  trouble  yourself  with 
inquiries  as  to  whether  you  agree  with  assertions 
phrased  so  winningly. 

The  same  quality  pervades  Sidney's  earlier  work — 
the  "Arcadia,"  of  which  the  posthumous  publication 
is  said  to  have  made  euphuism  seem  old-fashioned. 
More  than  once,  when  I  have  opened  the  book  for 
study,  I  have  found  myself  reading  on,  I  could  hardly 
tell  why;  and  that  accident  has  never  been  known  to 
occur  in  the  case  of  "Euphues."  Partly,  no  doubt, 
this  is  because  the  "Arcadia,"  frankly  imitative  of 
foreign  models  though  it  be,  has  some  vestige  of  a 
plot ;  because  its  characters,  too,  have  some  occasional 
semblance  of  vitality;  and  because,  here  and  there,  its 
descriptions  suggest  the  beauties  of  Nature,  while 
oftener  still  they  call  to  mind  the  immortal  unrealities 
of  Renaissance  painting.  Most  of  all,  however,  this 
quiet  fascination  is  a  question  of  style.  The  style  of 
Sidney,  like  that  of  Lily,  was  deliberately  and  inge- 
niously experimental ;  but,  unlike  Lily's,  it  sometimes 
rose  to  excellence.  The  most  familiar  example  of  it  is 
the  prayer  which  the  first  edition  of  "Eikon  Basilike" 
professed  to  have  been  used,  with  very  slight  altera- 
tions, by  King  Charles  in  the  hour  of  his  agony.  Mil- 
ton detected  the  origin  of  the  words,  and  pointed  it 
out  in  a  manner  so  far  from  sympathetic — I  had 
almost  said  so  scurrilous — that  the  passage  disap- 
peared from  later  editions  of  the  "Eikon."    But  mod- 


22         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

ern  feeling  would  be  apt  to  hold  King  Charles  more 
nearly  right  than  Milton.  Here  is  the  prayer,  put  by 
Sidney  into  the  lips  of  an  imprisoned  heroine: 

"O  All-seeing  Light  and  eternall  Life  of  all  things, 
to  whom  nothing  is  either  so  great  that  it  may  resist 
or  so  small  that  it  is  contemned,  look  upon  my  misery 
with  thine  eye  of  mercy,  and  let  thine  infinite  power 
vouchsafe  to  limit  out  some  proportion  of  deliverance 
unto  me,  as  to  thee  shall  seem  most  convenient.  Let 
not  injury,  O  Lord,  triumph  over  me,  and  let  my 
faults  by  thy  hand  be  corrected,  and  make  not  mine 
unjust  enemy  the  minister  of  thy  justice.  But  yet, 
my  God,  if  in  thy  wisdom  this  be  the  aptest  chastise- 
ment for  my  inexcusable  folly,  if  this  low  bondage  be 
the  fittest  for  my  over-high  desires,  if  the  pride  of 
my  not  enough  humble  heart  be  thus  to  be  broken, 
O  Lord,  I  yield  unto  thy  will,  and  joyfully  embrace 
what  sorrow  thou  wilt  have  me  suffer.  Only  thus 
much  let  me  crave  of  thee  (let  my  craving,  O  Lord. 
be  accepted  of  thee,  since  even  that  proceeds  from 
thee),  let  me  crave,  even  by  the  noblest  title  which 
in  my  great  affiiction  I  give  myself,  that  I  am  thy 
creature,  and  by  thy  goodness  (which  is  thyself)  that 
thou  wilt  suffer  some  beams  of  thy  majesty  so  to 
shine  into  my  mind  that  it  may  still  depend  confi- 
dently on  thee.  Let  calamity  be  the  exercise  but  not 
the  overthrow  of  my  virtue;  let  their  power  prevail, 
but  prevail  not  to  destruction;  let  my  greatness  be 
their  prey;   let   my   pain  be  the  sweetness   of   their 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  23 

revenge;  let  them  (if  so  it  seem  good  unto  thee) 
vex  me  with  more  and  more  punishment.  But,  O 
Lord,  let  never  their  wickedness  have  such  a  hold  but 
that  I  may  carry  a  pure  mind  in  a  pure  body.  (And 
pausing  a  while)  And,  O  most  gracious  Lord,  what- 
ever become  of  me,  preserve  the  virtuous  Musidorus." 

The  dignity,  the  beauty,  the  pathos  of  this  prayer, 
as  a  whole,  make  us  at  first  prone  to  forget  what  the 
final  sentence  so  instantly  recalls  to  mind — that  in 
truth  these  noble  words,  as  Sidney  wrote  them,  were 
not  a  heart-felt  expression  of  devout  feehng,  but 
only  one  more  beautiful  rhetorical  experiment.  In 
fact,  they  are  no  more  than  another  effort,  like  the 
euphuisms  of  Lily,  to  show  the  hardly  precedented 
effects  of  which  our  new-found  English  was  capable. 

This  experimental  quality  of  Sidney's  style  is  most 
evident  in  the  verses  interspersed  throughout  the 
"Arcadia."  Even  if  we  had  no  other  records — of  his 
embryonic  academy,  the  "Areopagus,"  and  the  like 
— these  metrical  experiments  would  abundantly  prove 
how  eagerly  and  industriously  Sidney  tried  to  nation- 
alize in  English  the  literary  forms  which  delighted 
him  when  his  wits  strayed  abroad.  Some  of  the  verses 
he  thus  made  are  admirable  examples  of  the  sponta- 
neous beauty  which  vivifies  all  the  lasting  Elizabethan 
lyrics ;  others,  particularly  when  he  tried  to  subject 
the  stubbornly  modern  rhythm  of  English  to  what 
he  believed  the  immutable  laws  of  classical  prosody, 
are  almost   comically   impotent.      The   fact   that   his 


24         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

achievements  and  his  failures  stand  side  by  side — that 
one  can  never  feel  sure  whether  he  had  a  shade  of 
question  that  each  of  his  efforts  was  as  good  as  the 
last  or  the  next — reveals  the  truth  about  even  the 
ripest  beauties  of  his  endless,  rambling  romance.  From 
beginning  to  end,  like  "Euphues"  itself,  the  "Arcadia" 
was  imitative  of  foreign  models,  innocently  predatory 
of  whatever  it  chose  to  take  to  itself,  and,  above  all, 
consciously  experimental. 

Experimental  in  some  degree,  too,  were  the  sonnets 
which  are  Sidney's  highest  poetical  achievement.  In 
one  aspect,  the  unfinished  and  somewhat  confused 
sequence,  which  he  called  "Astrophel  and  Stella," 
seems  only  a  deliberate  effort,  far  more  nearly  suc- 
cessful than  any  before  it,  to  prove  English  capable 
of  such  effects  as  had  already  made  immortal  the 
sonnet-sequences  of  Italy.  In  another  aspect,  despite 
all  their  artificialities,  these  sonnets  seem  so  genuine 
that,  in  our  literal  age,  one  is  disposed  to  marvel 
how  the  pathetic  story  which  they  tell  can  have  re- 
mained so  long  neglected  by  romantic  poets  of  later 
times.  Whatever  the  truth — whether  they  were  mere 
experiments  or  the  actual  record  of  a  deeply  ideal  love 
— there  can  be  no  doubt  that  their  publication  in  1591 
set  a  fashion.  Before  1600,  the  sonnet-sequence  had 
become  a  popular  and  a  permanent  form  of  English 
literature;  and  had  Sidney  left  no  other  literary  trace, 
he  would  still  be  memorable  as  the  first  masterly  writer 
of  Ensrlish  sonnets. 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  25 

Traces  enough  he  left  besides,  not  only  in  literature 
but  in  the  heart  of  national  tradition.  There  is  only- 
one  other,  however,  on  which  we  have  time  now  to 
touch :  he  was  the  friend,  the  patron,  and  to  some 
degree  the  instigator  of  the  single  poet  among  his 
immediate  contemporaries  whose  achievement  has  won 
permanent  place  not  only  in  English  literature,  but  in 
the  literature  of  the  world.     This  was  Spenser. 

The  Poet's  Poet  he  has  been  called  so  long — he 
has  proved  so  long  and  so  surely  an  inspiration  to 
those  who  have  tried  to  make  our  language  an  instru- 
ment of  beauty — that  one  is  apt  to  forget  how  he  was 
once  only  another  poet  among  the  rest  who  were 
making  the  new  literature  of  England,  Not  to  speak 
of  his  other  work,  the  "Faerie  Queene" — though  it 
remains,  like  some  grandly  begun  cathedral,  only  a 
colossal  fragment — is  beyond  doubt  a  masterpiece. 
You  may  despair  as  much  as  you  like  over  the  pre- 
Quixotic  intricacies  of  its  tenuous  plot;  you  may  lose 
your  way,  again  and  again,  in  futile  efforts  to  follow 
the  invisible  thread  of  its  allegories ;  you  may  lay  the 
book  down,  more  than  once  or  twice,  dazed  for  the 
moment  with  the  sweetness  of  its  melody;  but  you 
may  search  it  almost  in  vain  for  the  page,  for  the 
stanza,  even  for  the  line,  which  is  not  alive  to  this 
day  with  the  very  soul  of  Elizabethan  music.  Such 
mastery  of  language,  turning  into  deathless  beauty 
words  and  phrases  which  had  seemed  fit  only  for 
humdrum  use,  English  had  never  before  approached; 


26         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

and  that  mastery  has  never  been  surpassed.     Indeed, 
one  can  hardly  imagine  that  it  ever  will  be. 

Yet,  as  one  grows  even  slightly  familiar  with  Spen- 
ser's whole  work,  one  begins  to  perceive  in  it,  besides 
his  permanent  characteristics,  features  which  mark 
him  as  historically  Elizabethan.  There  are  traces  left 
of  his  early  experimental  theories — the  vestiges  of  the 
"Areopagus,"  for  example,  and  the  surviving  bits  of  his 
correspondence  with  Gabriel  Harvey.  In  the  "Shep- 
herd's Calendar,"  he  avowedly  attempts  a  great  many 
literary  experiments,  bolder,  more  free,  more  com- 
prehensive than  those  which  appeared  in  Sidney's 
"Arcadia,"  but  obviously  of  the  same  school.  If 
one  were  disposed  to  doubt  whether  Spenser  could 
possibly  be  literal,  his  "View  of  the  State  of  Ireland" 
would  set  doubt  at  rest ;  though  cast  in  the  now  obso- 
letely  conventional  form  of  a  pseudo-classic  dialogue, 
it  states  plain  facts  with  uncompromising  precision. 
Yet,  when  Spenser  attempted  to  treat  fact  in  poetry, 
he  began  by  elaborately  conventionalizing  it.  In  his 
elegy  on  Sir  Philip  Sidney — "Astrophel,"  he  calls  it — 
he  describes  his  dead  patron  as  a  shepherd ;  and  he 
sets  forth  the  death  which  he  so  deeply  laments  as 
resulting  from  the  bite  of  a  boar,  which  involved  phys- 
ical details  identical  with  those  under  which  poor 
Sidney  lay  suffering  after  that  mortal  wound  at  Zut- 
phen.  In  "Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again,"  Spenser 
pleasantly  records  his  obligations  to  Sir  Walter  Ral- 
egh; and,  by  way  of  intimating  that  at  one  time  they 
read  their  verses  to  each  other,  he  tells  us  that  when 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  27 

the  Shepherd  of  the  Ocean  came  to  visit  CoHn  Clout, 
one  piped  while  the  other  sang,  and  presently,  when 
the  first  took  to  singing,  the  second  piped  in  turn. 
Spenser  belonged,  in  short,  to  a  time  which  could 
not  imagine  a  treatment  of  fact  to  be  poetic  unless 
that  treatment  should  distort  fact  into  some  lifeless 
likeness  of  conventional  and  civilized  fiction. 

The  "Faerie  Queene"  itself,  indeed,  if  one  neglect 
for  a  while  the  wonderful  mastery  of  its  diction,  has 
a  rather  archaic  aspect.  "The  general  end  of  all  the 
book,"  the  preface  tells  us,  was  "to  fashion  a  gentle- 
man or  noble  person  in  vertuous  and  gentle  discipline." 
Spenser  seems  to  have  intended  that  the  poem  should 
be  practically  didactic — should  help  people  to  behave 
themselves  properly.  Yet,  instead  of  proceeding  to 
dreary  aphorisms,  he  instantly  loses  himself  in  the 
melodious  mazes  of  his  confused  and  misty  allegory. 
The  principles  which  animated  him  may  have  been 
almost  as  beautiful  as  the  lines  he  came  to  write  so 
freely;  but  what  these  principles  were,  no  unaided 
reader  could  ever  guess,  and  the  few  who  have  had 
the  patience  to  puzzle  them  out  have  not  been  per- 
ceptibly influenced  by  them  in  point  of  conduct.  As 
a  didactic  poem,  the  "Faerie  Queene"  is  almost  com- 
ically inefficient.  For  which  circumstance  we  may  be 
duly  thankful ;  for  no  didactic  poem  has  ever  yet  been 
such  a  thing  of  beauty  as  is  this  first  truly  great 
achievement  of  formal  Elizabethan  experiment. 

Yet,  great  as  Spenser  is,  his  greatness  lacks  the 
ultimate  virtue  of  simplicity.     It  chances  that  the  last 


28         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

two  stanzas  of  the  "Faerie  Queene" — the  fragment 
which  is  called  "imperfite" — express,  in  beautifully 
tentative  verse,  a  feeling  which  had  earlier  been 
summed  up,  in  a  deathless  line,  by  one  of  the  three 
or  four  poets  throughout  all  literature  who  are 
supremely  great.  Here  are  Spenser's  verses — verses 
in  which  one  can  almost  feel  a  consciousness  that  all 
this  experiment  of  his  was,  at  best,  only  experiment 
still: 

When  I  bethink  me  of  that  speech  whyleare, 

Of  Mutabilitie,  and  well  it  weigh, 
Meseems  that  though  she  all  unworthy  were 
Of  the  Heavens'  Rule,  yet  very  sooth  to  say 
In  all  things  else  she  bears  the  greatest  sway; 
Which  makes  me  loath  this  state  of  life  so  tickle. 

And  love  of  things  so  vain  to  cast  away. 
Whose  flowering  pride,  so  fading  and  so  fickle, 
Short  Time  shall  soon  cut  down  with  his  consuming  sickle. 

Then  'gin  I  think  on  that  which  Nature  said 

Of  that  same  time  when  no  more  change  shall  be, 
But  steadfast  rest  of  all  things,  firmly  stayed 

Upon  the  pillars  of  Eternity, 

Which  is  contrayr  to  Mutabilitie; 
For  all  that  moveth  doth  in  Change  delight, 

But  henceforth  all  shall  rest  eternally 
With  him  that  is  the  God  of  Sabaoth  hight. 
O,  thou  great  Sabaoth  God,  grant  me  that  sabbath's  sight. 

And  here  is  the  single  line  in  which  Dante  summar- 
ized forever  the  thought  for  which  Spenser  seems  to 
have  been  groping : 

In  la  sua  voluntade  h  nostra  pace. 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  29 

"In  His  will  is  our  peace,"  it  means  literally;  but 
no  translation  can  even  shadow  forth  the  full  meaning 
which  Dante  compressed  into  the  marvellous  sound 
and  rhythm  of  his  supreme  phrase.  The  contrast 
between  that  line  of  Dante's  and  those  two  stanzas 
of  Spenser's  tells  the  whole  story  of  two  literary 
epochs.  If  others  can  feel  that  contrast  as  I  feel  it, 
we  need  dwell  no  more  on  the  difference  between 
untiring  enthusiasm  of  experiment  and  the  serene  cer- 
tainty of  mastery. 

No  doubt  Elizabethan  literature  had  countless  other 
aspects  than  this  experimental  one,  on  which  we  have 
dwelt  so  long.  Yet,  for  our  purpose,  this  seems  to 
me  the  most  important,  the  most  significant  of  temper. 
For,  if  one  reflect  a  moment,  one  cannot  doubt  that 
the  nation  which  welcomed  such  varied,  such  shifting, 
such  spontaneous  work  as  we  have  glanced  at  was 
a  nation  both  passionately  eager  for  novelty  and  so 
alert  in  perception  as  to  notice  with  unthinking  de- 
light even  verbal  novelties — a  nation,  too,  blest  for 
the  while  with  the  rare  power  of  delighting  not  only 
in  novelty  but  also  in  beauty.  It  is  only  when  this 
impression  of  the  Elizabethan  public  grows  distinct 
that  one  can  begin  to  understand  the  greatest  phase 
of  Elizabethan  literature — the  drama,  which  so  swiftly 
developed  during  the  last  few  years  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  When  Sidney's  "Defence  of  Poesie"  was 
written,  the  English  drama,  as  we  know  it  now,  had 
hardly  come  into  existence.     When  the  seventeenth 


30         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

century  began,  fifteen  years  later,  Shakspere's  work 
was  half  done. 

Supremely  as  he  has  now  emerged  above  all  other 
modern  poets,  Shakspere  was  historically  an  Eliza- 
bethan playwright ;  and  as  the  facts  of  his  career  grow 
distinct,  there  seems  nothing  in  them  more  wonderful 
than  that,  in  spite  of  his  magnitude,  his  development 
was  so  normal.  So  normal,  too,  was  the  development 
of  the  drama  in  his  time  that  one  is  apt  to  choose  its 
history  as  the  most  complete  recorded  example  of  the 
natural  law  which  governs  the  growth,  the  flourish, 
and  the  decline  of  schools  of  art.  One  grows,  indeed, 
to  think  of  the  Elizabethan  drama  as  if  it  were  an 
organism,  as  distinct  and  palpable  as  some  physical 
body;  and  of  Shakspere's  work,  which  comes,  both 
chronologically  and  substantially,  in  the  very  midst 
of  its  brief,  intense  life,  as  the  single  concrete  fact 
from  which  its  whole  history  might  be  inferred. 

Like  all  other  schools  of  fine  art,  this  Elizabethan 
drama  had  its  origin  in  immemorial  convention.  Long 
before  the  Renaissance  or  the  Reformation  had  begun 
to  stir  England,  certain  popular  dramatic  practices  had 
existed  there.  Among  the  earliest  were  the  Miracle 
plays,  in  which  Scriptural  stories,  with  much  gro- 
tesque interlude,  were  enacted,  on  Church  festivals, 
by  the  guilds  of  various  towns.  A  little  later  came 
less  elaborate  Moralities,  in  which  personified  Virtues 
and  Vices  stalked  through  didactic  conventionalities. 
About  the  same  time  came  traces  of  more  popular  in- 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  31 

terludes,  such  as  that  grotesque  "Masque  of  the  Wor- 
thies" which  enhvens  the  tedious  length  of  "Love's  La- 
bour's Lost."  When  this  kind  of  archaic  drama  was  at 
its  trivial  best,  the  Renaissance  had  more  than  dawned, 
and  scholarly  people  were  trying  to  impose  on  Eng- 
land, just  as  they  successfully  tried  to  impose  on  Italy 
and  on  France,  the  dogmatic  conventions  which  they 
believed  to  have  controlled  the  inherently  excellent 
dramas  of  antiquity.  "Gorboduc,"  the  first  printed 
English  tragedy,  commended  itself  to  the  taste  of 
Sidney  because  it  is  drearily  Senecan  in  form.  "Ralph 
Roister  Doister"  and  "Gammer  Gurton's  Needle," 
commonly  thought  of  as  our  earliest  printed  comedies, 
are  closely  modelled  on  Plautus  and  Terence.  Yet 
all  three  are  English  in  substance.  "Gorboduc"  trans- 
lates into  dramatic  form  just  such  a  legendary  chroni- 
cle of  national  history  as  Shakspere,  a  generation 
later,  translated  into  "Lear"  and  "Macbeth."  "Ralph 
Roister  Doister"  is  full  of  such  horse-play  as  boister- 
ously delighted  the  spectators  of  miracles  and  inter- 
ludes; and  "Gammer  Gurton's  Needle,"  for  all  its 
classic  form,  tells  a  rudely  comic  story  which  might 
have  come  straight  from  some  of  Chaucer's  more  hum- 
ble characters — the  Miller  or  the  Wife  of  Bath.  Even 
this  most  classic  phase  of  the  English  drama  was  not 
contentedly  obedient  to  the  spirit  of  classicism;  and, 
by  the  time  of  Sidney's  "Defence  of  Poesie,"  the  popu- 
lar theatre  had  sprung  into  a  wildly  romantic  luxuri- 
ance, of  wdiich  he  gently  and   fruitlessly  expounded 


32         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

what  seemed  to  him  the  errors.  A  very  Httle  later 
came  some  plays  in  which  the  two  spirits  were  fused 
— the  comedies  of  Lily,  which  succeeded  his  "Eu- 
phues." 

Lily's  plays  resemble  his  novels.  They  have  little 
permanent  merit ;  but  their  inexhaustible  ingenuity  of 
situation  and  of  phrase  prove  him  once  more  a  master 
of  novelty.  He  instinctively  knew  his  public ;  and  he 
had  that  shallow  kind  of  originality  which  enables 
men  to  do  for  the  first  time  things  which  abler  men 
shall  by  and  by  do  better.  He  wrote  mostly  for  the 
companies  of  child-actors  who  were  gathered  for  vari- 
ous purposes  of  public  performance  in  the  choirs  of 
the  Royal  Chapel  and  of  St.  Paul's.  He  took  his 
plots  mostly  from  the  classics,  then  so  newly  revived 
that  classical  stories  were  for  a  while  once  more  a 
source  not  of  tears  but  of  joy.  He  set  forth  these 
stories  with  all  the  structural  freedom  permitted  by 
the  rude  dramatic  traditions  of  native  England.  And 
he  graced  his  extravagances  of  structure  with  a  dia- 
logue as  ingeniously  unexpected  and  polished  in  its 
turns  as  was  the  already  popular  style  of  his  "Eu- 
phues."  Up  to  this  time  there  may  have  been  doubt 
whether  the  growing  English  drama  should  take  a 
classic  or  a  romantic  form.  The  popular  romanticism 
of  Lily  virtually  settled  the  question.  The  romantic 
drama  was  not  only  to  be  popular;  it  was  to  be  a  mat- 
ter of  fashion  as  well. 

Meanwhile,  with  the  establishment  of  regular  thea- 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  33 

tres,  there  had  arisen  a  school  of  popular  playwrights 
whose  business  was  to  supply,  on  short  demand,  plays 
which  should  please  the  general  public.  Scapegraces 
from  the  universities,  as  a  rule,  these  careless  poets — 
whom  even  the  extensive  charity  of  that  pristine  time 
held  hardly  fit  for  holy  orders — went  to  wretched  ends 
in  such  taverns  as  Shakspere  shows  us  in  Henry  IV. 
At  least  one  of  them — Marlowe,  by  far  the  most 
gifted — left  fragments  of  imaginative  poetry,  inter- 
spersed in  worthless  stuff,  which  make  the  squalid 
story  of  his  premature  death  more  tragic  than  any  of 
those  he  set  forth.  And  the  very  inequality  of  his  care- 
less work,  vivified  by  the  occasional  flashes  of  his 
genius,  throws  light  on  its  true  character.  Nowadays 
a  playright  is  generally  expected  either  to  invent  his 
plot,  or  frankly  to  announce  that  he  has  adapted  the 
work  of  some  one  else,  who  proceeds  to  claim  share 
in  the  copyright.  Elizabethan  playwrights  never 
dreamed  of  such  refinements.  In  the  literature  which 
which  was  springing  up  about  them,  particularly  in 
chronicles  and  translations,  they  found  plenty  of  inter- 
esting stories.  These  they  took  for  their  material, 
translating  them,  or  what  parts  of  them  they  chanced 
to  fancy,  into  terms  of  dialogue  and  action.  And 
thus  translating,  rather  than  in  any  sense  creating, 
they  found  their  wits  free  to  make  lovely  novelties  of 
phrase — like  the  novelties  which  had  assured  the 
popularity  of  Lily,  and  Sidney,  and  Spenser. 

By  the  time  when  Shakspere  came  to  London — Mr. 


34         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

Sidney  Lee  believes  that  he  came  in  1586 — these  reck- 
less old  translators  of  tales  into  dramas  had  begun  to 
develop  several  varieties  of  play,  which  modern  criti- 
cism has  chosen  to  classify.  The  most  characteristic 
was  the  chronicle  history,  a  frank  translation  into 
dramatic  terms  of  passages,  usually  covering  whole 
reigns,  from  such  contemporary  chroniclers  as  Stowe 
or  Holinshed.  Chronicle  histories  made  no  pretence 
to  dramatic  coherence  or  unity ;  but  people  who  sat 
through  them  came  away  satisfied  with  rant,  pagean- 
try, and  a  misty  idea  that  they  had  agreeably  acquired 
historical  information.  Another  kind  of  play,  which 
was  not  always  quite  distinct,  was  the  tragedy  of 
blood — or  better,  of  blood  and  thunder,  as  we  should 
say  to-day.  These  tragedies  translated  into  dramatic 
form  the  most  wildly  sensational  tales  of  battle,  mur- 
der, sudden  death,  and  madness  which  their  authors 
could  discover  in  the  crude  fictions  of  chap-books  or 
wherever  else.  Chronicle  history  ripened  into  Mar- 
lowe's masterpiece — "Edward  H."  The  tragedy  of 
blood  appears  most  distinctly  in  the  work  of  Kyd. 
Lily,  as  we  have  seen  already,  was  making  ingeniously 
graceful  comedies  at  the  same  time.  And  there  was 
another  kind  of  more  broadly  romantic  comedy,  of 
which  one  finds  traces  in  the  work  of  Greene  and  of 
Peele. 

The  very  mention  of  these  names  suggests  another 
fact,  which  was  true  of  all  the  old  playwrights.  These 
hasty  translators  of  narrative  into  drama  were  so  apt 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  35 

to  work  in  careless  collaljoration  that  you  can  hardly 
ever  feel  sure  that  any  given  scene  of  the  period  is 
all  by  one  hand.  What  you  can  assert  is  that  all 
of  them  alike  seem  animated  by  the  same  experi- 
mental spirit  which  animated  the  more  serious  and 
more  respectable  literature  of  their  time;  that  all 
were  addressing  a  public  enthusiastically  eager  for 
novelty;  and  that  each  seemed  able  to  provide  some 
novelty  o£  a  faintly  specific  kind.  Marlowe  was  at 
once  sensational  and  nobly  imaginative;  Kyd  was  so 
boldly  sensational  that  no  one  stopped  to  remark  his 
dulness  of  imagination ;  Lily  scintillated  with  pretty 
ingenuities ;  Greene  and  Peele  were  freely,  volubly 
romantic.  All  alike  were  purveyors  of  novelty  to  a 
public  wdiich  craved  it.  All  alike  were  men  of  a 
period,  of  a  moment  whose  more  formal  literature  was 
alive  with  a  spirit  of  enthusiastic  experiment. 

To  understand  Shakspere.  we  must  keep  this  spirit 
and  these  facts  in  mind.  Once  for  all,  of  course,  we 
must  admit  the  mystery  of  his  genius ;  we  must  grant 
his  ineffable  power  of  creating  things  which  have  im- 
mortally survived  the  human  conditions  of  their  crea- 
tion. But  we  need  not  fall  into  the  superstition  of 
supposing  that  in  his  own  time  he  could  have  seemed 
superhuman.  Uncertain  as  literary  chronology  re- 
mains, enough  is  known  to  prove  the  chief  facts  of 
his  personal  and  artistic  history.  He  came  to  London 
when  the  first  school  of  English  playw^rights — the 
school  at  which  we  have  glanced — had  just  begun  to 


36         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

display  its  powers  and  its  limits.  He  made  himself 
one  of  them.  The  others  soon  died :  Greene,  for  ex- 
ample, came  to  a  miserable  end  in  1592;  a  year  later, 
Marlowe  was  killed  in  a  drunken  brawd.  Shakspere 
lived  on,  for  a  while  almost  the  only  survivor  of  this 
early  time.  Then,  after  a  few  years,  a  new  and  far 
more  sophisticated  school  of  playwrights  arose.  With 
these,  as  with  the  earlier  school,  Shakspere  was  con- 
temporary ;  and  he  was  the  only  one  of  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists  whose  career  thus  chanced  to  cover  the 
two  distinct  periods  of  the  drama — that  of  its  rise 
and  that  of  its  decline.  Again,  the  better  one  knows 
his  surroundings,  the  more  clearly  one  begins  to  per- 
ceive that  his  chief  peculiarity,  when  compared  with 
his  contemporaries,  was  a  somewhat  sluggish  avoid- 
ance of  needless  invention.  When  anyone  else  had 
done  a  popular  thing,  Shakspere  was  pretty  sure  to 
imitate  him  and  to  do  it  better.  But  he  hardly  ever 
did  anything  first.  To  his  contemporaries  he  must 
have  seemed  deficient  in  originality,  at  least  as  com- 
pared with  Lily,  or  Marlowe,  or  Ben  Jonson,  or  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher.  He  was  the  most  obviously  imi- 
tative dramatist  of  all — following  rather  than  leading 
superficial  fashion.  And  so  his  work  now  appears  to 
be  the  most  versatile  of  all;  his  imitative  variety  is  so 
comprehensive,  indeed,  that  one  can  illustrate  from 
Shakspere  alone  the  whole  history  of  dramatic  litera- 
ture during  the  twenty-five  years  of  his  creative  life. 
This  imitativeness  of  Shakspere's — his  comparative 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  37 

lack  of  superficial  originality — is  most  obvious  in  his 
earlier  work.  His  first  recorded  publication,  "Venus 
and  Adonis,"  which  appeared  during  the  year  when 
Marlowe  was  killed,  is  certainly  the  best  example  in 
English  of  its  peculiar  kind  of  versified  narrative. 
With  equal  certainty,  there  were  already  in  our  lan- 
guage a  number  of  these  free  metrical  versions  of  clas- 
sical stories,  glowing  with  such  temper  as  one  feels  be- 
neath the  pagan  canvases  of  Titian.  Before  this  time 
Shakspere  had  certainly  done  years  of  work  as  a 
dramatic  hack-writer  for  the  popular  theatres;  and 
there  is  fair  reason  to  believe  that  he  had  already 
written  "Love's  Labour's  Lost,"  "Henry  VI.,"  "Titus 
Andronicus,"  the  "Comedy  of  Errors,"  and  the  "Two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona."  None  of  these  resembles 
"Venus  and  Adonis" ;  what  is  more,  none  is  much  like 
any  of  the  others ;  but  each  has  much  in  common  with 
popular  work  already  set  forth  by  somebody  else. 
"Love's  Labour's  Lost"  is  obviously  in  the  manner 
of  Lily.  "Henry  VI.,"  certainly  collaborative  but 
certainly  too  vivified  by  true  Shaksperian  touches,  is 
a  chronicle  history  of  the  earlier  kind :  Greene  and 
Peele  were  the  chief  makers  of  such  plays  until  Mar- 
lowe developed  the  type  into  his  almost  masterly 
"Edward  II."  "Titus  Andronicus,"  so  often  repudi- 
ated by  sentimental  people  as  unworthy,  but  surely 
attributed  to  Shakspere  during  his  lifetime,  is  a  trag- 
edy of  blood,  much  in  the  manner  of  Kyd.  The 
"Comedy  of  Errors"  adapts  for  popular  presentation 


38         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

a  familiar  kind  of  Latin  comedy.  The  "Two  Gentle- 
men of  Verona"  is  an  experiment  in  the  sort  of 
romantic  comedy  which  Shakspere  soon  made  more 
his  own  than  any  other  form  of  drama.  The  real 
nature  of  Shakspere's  power  begins  to  appear.  He 
w^as  by  far  the  most  versatile  dramatist  of  all.  If 
he  rarely  did  anything  for  the  first  time,  he  tried  his 
hand  at  almost  everything  which  anyone  else  had 
attempted;  and  he  did  almost  everything  better  than 
it  had  been  done  before.  Yet,  after  six  or  seven 
years  of  work,  he  had  hardly  written  a  page  which 
fully  indicated  the  power  which  was  in  him. 

Except  as  a  phrase-maker.  Each  of  these  plays, 
and  "Venus  and  Adonis,"  too,  contains,  one  may  con- 
fidently say,  a  greater  number  of  admirable  and  beau- 
tiful detached  phrases  than  are  to  be  found  in  any 
work  of  equal  length  by  any  of  his  contemporaries. 
No  fact  could  go  much  further  to  show  how  normally 
Elizabethan  his  early  temper  was.  Those  years  were 
years  when  the  whole  world — not  only  the  dramatists 
but  the  poets  and  the  writers  of  ingenious  prose  as 
well — were  enthusiastically  playing  with  words,  eager 
to  discover  every  effect  of  which  our  newly  tamed 
language  was  gracefully  capable.  And  Shakspere's 
phrases  have  proved  more  memorable  than  the  rest 
only  because  his  mind  chanced  to  be  of  that  rare  kind 
in  which  words  and  concepts  seem  almost  identical. 
When  other  men  juggled  with  words,  he  unwittingly 
juggled    with   ideas   as   well ;    so   where   others   only 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  39 

punned  he  unwittingly  intermingled  astonishing  vari- 
eties of  thought.  This  fact,  however,  no  contemporary 
could  have  known ;  to  be  assured  of  wisdom,  a  phrase 
must  stand  the  test  of  the  centuries.  In  his  own  time, 
accordingly,  Shakspere  must  have  begun  by  seeming 
chiefly  noteworthy  as  the  most  versatile  among  count- 
less nimble  makers  of  phrase. 

And  then  followed  the  few  years  when  the  elder 
playwrights  were  dead,  and  the  later  had  hardly  begun 
their  work;  the  years  when  Shakspere  was  virtually 
alone.  Broadly  speaking,  these  were  the  years  be- 
tween the  death  of  Marlowe,  in  1593,  and  that  of 
Spenser,  in  1599.  In  1600  an  exceptional  number 
of  quartos  attested  how  popular  Shakspere  had  be- 
come meanwhile.  He  did  so  much,  and  what  he  did 
was  so  extraordinary,  that  we  have  no  choice  left  us 
but  to  speed  over  the  story.  In  brief,  he  brought 
tragedy  to  the  point  of  "Romeo  and  Juliet,"  where  for 
a  while  he  left  it.  He  developed  chronicle  history 
through  the  successive  stages  of  "Richard  III.," 
"Richard  IL,"  and  "King  John,"  until,  in  "Henry 
IV."  and  "Henry  V.,"  he  virtually  invented  a  new 
kind  of  literature — historical  fiction.  He  awakened 
comedy  into  the  fantasy  of  the  "Midsummer  Night's 
Dream" ;  he  carried  it  through  the  glowing  romance 
of  the  "Merchant  of  Venice" ;  and  he  brought  it  to 
the  complete  maturity  of  "Much  Ado  About  Nothing," 
"As  You  Like  It,"  and  "Twelfth  Night."  Meanwhile, 
he  had  surely  written  some  of  his  sonnets.    Mr.  Sidney 


40         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

Lee,  indeed,  the  most  authoritative  of  recent  critics, 
refers  all  the  sonnets  to  an  earlier  period  still. 

This  second  period  of  Shakspere's  work  proves,  like 
the  first,  varied,  versatile,  in  some  degree  experimental. 
The  difference  lies  in  the  kindling  force  of  his  imag- 
ination. This  has  finally  passed  beyond  the  stage  of 
phrase-making;  it  has  breathed  life  into  character  after 
character  who  have  proved  immortal — Romeo,  Juliet, 
and  Mercutio;  Shylock  and  Portia;  Falstaff;  Bene- 
dick and  Beatrice,  and  the  rest.  It  has  developed  into 
full  vitality  what  had  previously  been  the  archaic  con- 
ventions of  chronicle  history  and  of  romantic  comedy. 
It  has  made  the  greatest  known  tragedy  of  youthful 
love.  It  has  been  able  to  suffuse  each  separate  work 
of  its  creation  with  an  atmosphere  as  distinct  as  those 
we  breathe  in  separate  regions  of  actual  earth.  And, 
if  the  Sonnets  truly  belong  here,  it  has  achieved  the 
highest  work  of  that  elaborately  artificial  literary 
fashion  which  Wyatt  and  Surrey  started  and  which 
Sidney  made  permanent. 

Whether  Shakspere's  sonnets  are  autobiographic  or 
mere  feats  of  rhetoric,  one  thing  is  surely  true  of  them. 
They  imitated  approved  models;  they  followed  the 
fashion,  and  did  not  lead  it.  Taken  quite  by  them- 
selves, as  modern  readers  are  apt  to  take  them,  they 
may  well  seem  the  key  with  which  the  poet  unlocked 
his  heart.  If  so,  "the  less  Shakspere  he."  For,  taken 
in  their  relation  to  the  hundreds  of  sonnets  which 
enriched  English  between  1590  and   1600,  they  seem 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  41 

little  else  than  another  piece  of  conclusive  proof  that 
what  other  men  had  done  well,  Shakspere  could  al- 
ways do  better. 

The  subject-matter  of  the  sonnets,  like  that  of  all 
Elizabethan  sequences,  is  love — the  varying  moods 
through  which  a  lover  is  bound  to  pass.  And  love, 
when  set  forth  by  one  who  even  pretends  to  be  an 
earnest  lover,  is  bound  to  seem  serious.  Serious,  too, 
must  seem  the  utterances  of  emotion  and  the  develop- 
ments of  character  in  any  drama  or  other  fiction  which 
attains  the  excellence  of  lasting  vitality.  So,  indeed, 
must  aphorism  and  other  mere  turns  of  phrase,  if  the 
phrase-maker,  while  ingeniously  juggling  with  words, 
has  even  unwittingly  mingled  with  those  words  con- 
cepts which  accidentally  combine  in  pregnancy  of 
thought.  It  is  no  wonder  that  if  Shakspere  had  never 
written  another  line  than  those  at  which  we  have 
glanced,  he  would  have  seemed  to  half  mankind  not 
only  an  eminent  dramatist  and  poet,  but  also  a  weighty 
philosopher.  Yet  it  does  not  follow  that  he  meant 
to  be  one,  or  even  suspected  that  anyone  could  think 
him  so.     , 

We  must  grant,  to  begin  with,  the  mystery  of  his 
genius.  We  must  grant  that  to  him,  more  than  to 
any  other  man  who  has  written  our  language,  words 
and  concepts  were  almost  identical.  We  must  grant 
that  the  slow  but  constant  kindling  of  his  imaginative 
power  had  begun  so  to  glow  that  he  could  not  help 
wakening  to   life   the   stiffly   conventional    characters 


42         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

which  he  found,  as  Httle  more  than  names,  in  the  tales 
and  the  fictions  he  adapted  for  the  stage.  We  must 
grant,  too,  that  by  this  time  his  imagination  could  not 
help  suffusing  each  new  drama  with  a  subtle,  unmis- 
takable atmosphere  of  its  own.  And  we  must  remem- 
ber that  he  came  to  the  fulness  of  his  power  at  the  mo- 
ment when  that  wonderful  Elizabethan  world  was  in 
the  very  heyday  of  its  enthusiastic  experiment.  Grant- 
ing and  remembering  all  this,  we  can  hardly  fail  to  see 
that  even  though  he  worked  with  no  deeper  conscious 
purpose  than  an  effort  to  do  more  effectively  things 
which  other  men  had  already  done  well,  he  would 
probably  have  produced  just  such  results  as  we  have 
the  happiness  to  possess.  This  explanation  of  him 
is  the  simplest.  To  seek  in  him  for  more,  to  fancy 
him  a  deliberate  philosopher  or  teacher,  seems  wanton 
disregard  of  the  principle  that  what  may  be  rationally 
explained  need  not  be  held  a  miracle. 

Thus  considered,  Shakspere,  in  1600,  seems  some- 
thing more  than  our  supreme  poet.  He  proves  to  be 
also  a  man  of  his  time — an  Elizabethan.  And,  again 
and  again,  the  qualities  which  the  fact  of  his  survival 
have  made  so  many  of  us  fancy  peculiar  to  him 
prove  qualities  which  we  have  found  in  the  work  of 
the  fading  dramatists  and  poets  who,  in  his  own  time, 
seemed  living  as  steadily  as  he.  By  a  happy  chance, 
his  career  fell  in  the  very  midst  of  the  epoch  whose 
meaning  his  works  express.  Besides  his  essential 
greatness,    then,    he   chances   actually   to   be   the   one 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  43 

Elizabethan  poet  in  whose  work  we  may  most  surely 
feel  the  full  national  temper  of  his  time. 

That  national  temper — the  character  of  England 
when  the  seventeenth  century  began — is  what  we  are 
attempting  to  perceive  together.  It  is  hard  to  define, 
yet  not  hard  to  know.  We  have  seen  enough,  even 
in  this  hasty  glance,  to  remind  ourselves  of  its  most 
certain  feature — a  momentary  national  integrity. 
Elizabethans,  like  all  other  men,  differed  among  them- 
selves; but  their  England  was  a  world  where,  for  a 
little  while,  one  can  feel  first  the  characteristics  which 
men  have  in  common  and  only  afterward  those  which 
distinguish  them  apart  from  one  another.  The 
makers  of  lyric  poems,  the  workers  in  our  elder  prose, 
and  Lily,  and  Sidney,  and  Spenser,  and  the  dramatists, 
and  even  Shakspere  himself,  were  first  of  all  men  of 
that  eager,  buoyant  time,  remembered  still  in  tradition 
as  the  heroic  age  of  England. 

And  the  quality  of  English  character  in  that  vigor- 
ous elder  integrity  has  a  sort  of  youthful  ardor  which 
suffuses  every  phase  of  its  expression.  In  life  as  in 
letters,  those  years  were  years  of  exploration,  of  ex- 
periment, of  spontaneous,  enthusiastic,  versatile  eager- 
ness to  discover  the  mysteries  which  lurked,  wherever 
the  bodies  or  the  souls  of  men  might  stray,  beyond 
the  bounds  of  the  horizon. 

On  the  coins  of  old  Spain  there  is  a  device  which 
comes  to  mind  whenever  I  try  to  define  this  spirit. 
The  shield  of  Castile  and  Leon  was  supported  by  two 


44         THR   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

columns — the  Pillars  of  Hercules,  Gibraltar  and  the 
Moorish  hill  across  the  Strait,  which  marked  the  limit 
of  the  Old  World.  But  the  motto  speaks  of  no  limit. 
"Plus  Ultra,"  it  runs — there  is  more  beyond.  And 
what  that  more  might  be  no  man  could  know.  So 
forth  they  went  in  search  of  El  Dorado,  and  of  the 
fountains  of  Eternal  Youth,  coasting  and  spying, 
among  the  rest,  that  continent,  now  ours,  which  the 
centuries  have  shown  to  be  the  destined  nursery  of 
English-speaking  democracy. 

"Plus  Ultra"  seems  the  motto  best  fitting  Eliza- 
bethan literature,  when  the  seventeenth  century  began. 
Fifty  years  before,  the  language  of  England  was  still 
untamed;  even  twelve  years  before,  when  the  Armada 
was  cleared  from  the  Channel,  English  literature  had 
hardly  commenced  flourishing.  Now,  eager  experiment, 
eagerly  welcomed,  had  proved  our  English  not  only 
a  lastingly  efficient  vehicle  of  record  and  of  reason. 
It  had  asserted  for  English  a  lyric  power  unsurpassed 
by  that  of  any  other  tongue.  It  had  shown  that  the 
English  language  could  be  made  the  instrument  of 
civilized  literature.  Above  all,  this  eager  experi- 
ment had  awakened  into  being  a  new  kind  of  drama, 
more  varied  and  more  flexible  than  any  known  before, 
and  hardly  less  lofty  than  the  very  Greek.  And  all 
this  had  been  summarized  and  typified  in  the  early 
career  of  Shakspere,  still  doing  better  and  better. 
Wherever  he  had  approached  the  limits  of  literature, 
these  limits  had  receded,  as  mists  fade  before  a  morn- 


ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  45 

ing  sun.  There  were  no  Pillars  of  Hercules  left, 
except  as  a  gate  into  the  unexplored  wealth  and  mys- 
teries of  the  world  beyond.  And  what  lay  there  no 
man  could  tell,  or  stopped  for  the  while  to  guess. 
All  pressed  on. 

Our  task  henceforth  will  be  to  trace  the  way  in 
which  new  limitations  closed  about  them.  Shakspere 
himself  felt  a  check,  long  before  his  end.  And  after 
his  time  came  more  changes  and  more;  these  we  are 
to  consider  together  by  and  by.  But  now,  we  need 
look  no  further  than  we  have  gone.  When  the  sev- 
enteenth century  began,  "Plus  Ultra"  seemed  a  fit 
motto  for  all  the  national  temper  of  England:  there 
was  more  beyond. 


II 

THE  DISINTEGRATION  OF  THE  DRAMA. 

When  the  seventeenth  century  began,  we  have  seen, 
the  national  temper  of  England,  as  expressed  in  lit- 
erature, was  enthusiastic,  spontaneous,  and  versatile. 
More  clearly  still — when  we  hastily  traced  the  outburst 
of  lyric  poetry,  the  growth  of  serviceable  prose,  the 
literary  fantasies  and  achievements  of  Lily,  of  Sidney, 
and  of  Spenser,  and,  above  all,  the  development  of  the 
drama  into  the  full  ripeness  of  Shakspere's  chronicle 
histories  and  comedies — we  found  that  national  tem- 
per integral.  For  all  their  differences,  every  one  of 
the  Elizabethan  poets  and  writers — even  to  Shakspere 
himself — seemed  adventurously  experimental.  "Plus 
Ultra"  seemed  the  motto  for  those  buoyant  days;  be- 
yond the  Pillars  of  Hercules  there  was  more  than  any 
voyager  into  strange  seas  of  thought  could  know  be- 
forehand. 

Henceforth  our  effort  will  be  to  trace  the  changes 
in  this  national  temper,  until — a  century  later — Eng- 
land, at  least  in  its  literary  expression,  had  become 
so  different  from  that  elder  Elizabethan  world — an 
elder  world  from  which  not  only  modern  England, 
but  modern  America,  too,  can  surely  trace  its  origin. 

46 


THE    DRAMA  47 

And  first,  we  shall  consider  what  happened  to  the 
two  forms  of  literature  which,  in  1600,  had  reached 
the  highest  development — lyric  poetry  and  the  drama. 

We  may  best  consider  them  separately.  Within  half 
a  century  each  had  changed  conspicuously.  Both  had 
disintegrated ;  but  while  lyric  verse  still  flourished  dis- 
integrally,  the  drama  had  declined.  And  even  had 
their  courses  been  more  nearly  parallel,  there  would 
be  reason  why  we  should  first  attend  to  the  drama 
by  itself.  For,  as  I  hastily  said  when  we  first  turned 
to  it,  the  history  of  the  English  drama  from  its  awak- 
ening under  Elizabeth  to  its  extinction  under  Charles 
I.  affords  a  remarkably  clear  and  typical  example  of 
literary  evolution.  By  studying  its  course,  we  may 
discover  more  than  its  mere  history;  we  may  perceive 
how  any  school  of  art — Greek  sculpture,  if  you  like, 
Gothic  architecture,  Florentine  or  Venetian  painting 
— rises,  flourishes,  and  decays. 

In  brief,  whatever  school  of  human  expression  is 
destined  to  reach  vitality  originates  from  certain  fixed, 
immemorial  conventions  rather  blindly  followed  in  a 
manner  which  we  may  broadly  call  archaic.  The 
painted  statues  which  excavation  has  restored  to  light 
in  the  Museum  of  the  Acropolis  are  examples  of  this ; 
so  are  the  mosaics  of  Ravenna  or  of  St.  Mark's;  so 
are  the  English  miracle  plays  and  moralities.  To  a 
people  long  bound  by  such  archaic  convention  comes 
an  impulse,  no  doubt  traceable  to  external  forces,  but 
known  to  themselves  chiefly,  if  not  only,  as  freshened 


48         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

imaginative  activity.  They  suddenly  feel,  they  seem 
instinctively  to  perceive,  how  things  may  be  altered 
in  the  direction  of  truth  and  beauty.  When  such  im- 
pulse comes,  it  seems  for  a  while  illimitable;  there 
seems  no  reason  why  achievement  should  not  advance 
forever,  stronger  and  nobler  with  each  new  effort.  So 
the  art,  whatever  it  is,  surges  ahead — often  wildly  and 
luxuriantl}',  in  great  degree  abortively,  in  some  degree 
immortally.  Then,  by  and  by,  comes  an  insidious 
sense  of  the  limits  which  human  conditions  and  human 
powers  must  always  impose  on  humanity.  No  tower 
based  on  earth  can  ever  soar  to  the  true  heavens;  at 
best  it  can  only  lift  its  summit  a  little  higher  heaven- 
ward. So  a  benumbing  sense  of  fact  begins  inex- 
orably to  check  the  imaginative  impulse  which  a  little 
while  before  burst  so  irresistibly  from  the  bonds  of 
old  conventions;  and  in  new  conventional  traditions, 
in  contented  or  restless  consciousness  of  limitation, 
the  art  declines  into  a  new  lifelessness. 

There  are  many  moods,  accordingly,  in  which  one 
is  disposed  to  think  of  human  expression  much  as  one 
thinks  of  physical  phenomena  throughout  the  living 
world.  Wildly  various  and  strong  and  individual  as 
these  may  seem,  they  prove,  in  truth,  nothing  more 
various  or  individual  than  cumulative  examples  of 
how  those  great  forces  work  which  we  begin  to  rec- 
ognize as  natural  law.  When  we  take  whatever  frag- 
ment we  like  from  the  beautiful,  confused  intricacy  of 
nature,  and  study  its  parts  in  their  relations,  we  find 


THE    DRAMA  49 

slowly  growing  in  our  minds  an  image  of  such  death- 
less, inexorable  order  as  the  mere  contemplation  of 
fact  at  any  given  moment  could  never  reveal.  As- 
tronomy has  thus  emerged  into  colossal  truth;  geol- 
ogy, too;  physics  is  following;  biology  and  all  the 
human  facts  which  we  may  include  within  it  stand 
ready  for  deathless  words  which  shall  flash  newer  and 
ever  newer  cosmic  order  into  the  midst  of  receding 
chaos.  And  even  we  students  of  literature  cannot, 
and  should  not,  resist  that  truest  imaginative  impulse 
of  our  own  time ;  we  should  ourselves  be  anachronisms 
if  we  were  content  only  to  enjoy  the  splendidly  con- 
fused creations  of  the  art  we  love — if  we  did  not 
eagerly  strive  to  perceive  and  to  define  the  relations 
in  which  they  really  stand  to  one  another. 

In  fine  art,  as  in  all  Nature  else,  phenomena  appear 
inextricably  intermingled.  The  simplicity  of  labora- 
tories is  magnificently  artificial.  The  order  of  law, 
as  we  can  state  it,  is  never  the  same  as  the  aspect 
of  fact.  So  accidents  of  chronology  rarely  combine 
with  accidents  of  expression  to  define  such  generali- 
zations as  I  have  just  tried  to  suggest.  In  the  case  of 
the  Elizabethan  drama,  they  come  near  doing  so. 
The  uncertainties  of  date  which  still  confuse  the  mi- 
nute history  of  this  school  of  literature  do  not  confuse 
its  outline.  We  need  hardly  lament  longer  that  such 
uncertainties  persist.  Rather  we  may  count  ourselves 
fortunate  to  possess  two  passages,  so  definitely  fixed 
as  to  be  trustworthy  in  date,   and  so  unmistakably 


50         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

phrased  as  to  afford  remarkable  examples  of  how 
imagination  breaks  the  limits  of  old  conventions,  and 
of  how,  after  the  brief  period  when  imagination  and 
sense  of  fact  have  been  immortally  fused,  a  crush- 
ing sense  of  fact  slowly  and  inexorably  checks  the 
further  aspirations  of  imagination,  imposing  new  con- 
ventions on  an  art  which  is  no  longer  free. 

Marlowe's  "Tamburlaine,"  published  in  1590,  was 
probably  acted  at  just  about  the  time  when  Shakespere 
came  to  London.  Among  other  things,  it  is  believed 
finally  to  have  made  popular  and  inevitable  on  our 
stage  the  blank  verse  in  which  our  lasting  dramatic 
works  were  phrased.  Whether  the  prologue  was 
written  before  the  play  was  published,  nobody  knows; 
but  it  was  surely  published  in  1590,  before  Shakspere 
had  emerged  from  the  experiments  of  what  has  been 
called  his  apprenticeship ;  and  here  it  is : 

From  jigging  veins  of  rhyming  mother-wits, 
And  such  conceits  as  clownage  keeps  in  pay, 
We'll  lead  you  to  the  stately  tent  of  war. 
Where  you  shall  hear  the  Scythian  Tamburlaine 
Threatening  the  world  with  high  astounding  terms, 
And  scourging  kingdoms  with  his  conquering  sword. 
View  but  his  picture  in  this  tragic  glass. 
And  then  applaud  his  fortunes  as  you  please. 

If  no  other  words  of  Marlowe's  were  left  us, 
these  would  tell  what  Jonson  meant  when  he  wrote  of 
"Marlowe's  mighty  line" ;  they  would  express,  too, 
that  spirit  of  imaginative  aspiration,  bursting  the  bonds 


THE   DRAMA  51 

of  convention,  which  breathes  throughout  Marlowe's 
fragmentary  and  colossal  work.  Twenty-two  years 
after  this  prologue  was  published — perhaps  twenty-five 
after  it  was  written — there  was  published,  in  turn, 
the  first  complete  work  of  John  Webster,  the  "White 
Devil."  The  year  in  which  this  was  printed,  1612, 
coincides  with  the  close  of  Shakspere's  career  even 
more  closely  than  that  in  which  "Tamburlaine"  was 
probably  written  coincides  with  its  beginning.  Shak- 
spere  began  his  work  just  when  Marlowe  broke  the 
shackles  of  old  conventions,  and  ended  it  just  before 
John  Webster  prefaced  his  first  play  with  the  follow- 
ing words : 

"Detraction  is  the  sworn  friend  to  ignorance:  for 
mine  own  part,  I  have  ever  truly  cherished  my  good 
opinion  of  other  men's  worthy  labours;  especially  of 
that  full  and  heightened  style  of  Master  Chapman ;  the 
laboured  and  understanding  works  of  Master  Jonson; 
the  no  less  worthy  composures  of  the  both  worthily 
excellent  Master  Beaumont  and  Master  Fletcher;  and 
lastly  (without  wrong  last  to  be  named)  the  right 
happy  and  copious  industry  of  Master  Shakespeare, 
Master  Dekker,  and  Master  Heywood;  wishing  what 
I  write  may  be  read  by  their  light;  protesting  that,  in 
the  strength  of  mine  own  judgment,  I  know  them  so 
worthy,  that  though  I  rest  silent  in  my  ow^n  work, 
yet  to  most  of  theirs  I  dare  (without  flattery)  fix 
that  of  Martial, 

—  non  norunt  haec  monumenta  mori." 


52         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

You  shall  search  literature  far  and  wide  for  a  more 
concrete  statement  of  how  a  limiting  sense  of  fact 
benumbs  into  new  conventionality  a  school  of  art 
which  has  become  consciously  aware  that  it  must  obey 
tradition.  Marlowe  speaks  of  old,  enfeebled,  broken 
bonds;  Webster  of  those  bonds  with  which  the  giants 
themselves  replaced  the  ancient  ones  they  had  splen- 
didly disdained. 

And  so  back  to  Shakspere.  Webster  thought  him 
only  one  of  many  dramatic  poets ;  to  us  he  has  emerged 
supreme.  Of  the  playwrights  living  in  1612,  and 
mentioned  by  Webster  as  his  masters,  Shakspere,  in 
point  of  publication,  was  the  eldest.  When  we  last 
considered  him,  in  1600,  his  work  consisted  of  his 
histories,  his  comedies,  "Romeo  and  Juliet,"  and  per- 
haps the  Sonnets.  Now,  in  16 12,  his  career  was 
finished.  That  very  statement  is  enough  to  remind 
us  of  what  he  had  accomplished  during  the  first  twelve 
years  of  the  seventeenth  century.  He  had  produced 
"Julius  Csesar,"  "Measure  for  Measure,"  the  four 
great  tragedies,  "Antony  and  Cleopatra,"  and  "Cori- 
olanus";  then,  perhaps  after  a  brief  collaborative  in- 
terval, to  which  "Timon"  and  "Pericles"  are  attrib- 
uted, he  had  made  his  three  great  romances — "Cym- 
beline,"  the  "Tempest,"  and  the  "Winter's  Tale"; 
finally  he  had  done  his  collaborative  part,  whatever 
it  was,  in  "Henry  VHI." ;  so  an  end.  Here  is  matter 
enough  for  a  lifetime  of  conferences  like  ours.  In 
this  glance  at  the  latter  half  of  Shakspere's  work,  we 


THE    DRAMA  53 

must  neglect  all  detail  and  generalize  with  what  may 
well  seem  bewildering  swiftness. 

These  works  of  Shakspere  clearly  divide  themselves 
into  two  groups,  different  from  each  other  and  still 
more  different  from  what  he  had  written  before. 
Broadly  speaking,  we  may  call  the  first  group  tragic 
and  the  second  romantic.  In  the  tragic  group,  there 
is  little  trace  left  of  the  robust  cheerfulness  which 
marked  his  histories  and  his  comedies.  Instead  we 
have  a  crescent  emphasis  on  three  distinct,  though 
intermingled,  phases  of  inexorable  tragic  fact :  the 
irony  of  fate,  the  mischief  women  can  work,  and  the 
horrors  of  madness.  Meanwhile  his  style,  the  texture 
of  his  verse,  slowly  intensifies.  From  the  beginning 
his  words  had  been  charged  with  concepts  beyond 
the  words  of  other  men.  Now,  his  thought  grows 
overwhelming,  sometimes  to  the  point  of  distortion, 
finally  to  what  approaches  obscurity.  It  is  as  if  the 
marriage  of  word  and  meaning  in  his  mind  were 
growing  old — as  if  meaning  were  enforcing  its  con- 
trol more  and  more,  like  some  powerful  mate  who 
proves  at  last  the  dominant  partner  in  what  once 
seemed  equal  wedlock.  There  was  more  beauty, 
perhaps,  in  the  elder  time;  now  there  is  inestimably 
more  power  and  passion  and  significance. 

Then,  if  we  may  trust  our  conjectural  chronology, 
comes  a  sudden  cessation  of  power — in  "Coriolanus," 
what  seems  a  colossal  chill  of  exhaustion ;  in  "Timon" 
and  "Pericles"  something  like  momentary  impotence. 


54         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

Finally,  in  the  three  romances,  comes  a  new  temper 
and  a  new  manner.  Comedy  and  tragedy  are  finally 
fused.  Things  go  ill  for  a  while,  but  tend  to  happy 
ends.  As  the  "Tempest"  clears,  the  ideal  world  where 
it  has  played  its  mimic  life  is  suffused  with  the  radi- 
ance of  an  ideal  philosophy.  The  verse,  meanwhile, 
still  overcharged  with  meaning,  grows  so  flexibly  in- 
formal under  the  weight  thereof  that  if  you  playfully 
read  it  aloud  as  prose,  he  must  have  a  fine  ear  who 
should  detect  your  prank.  I  touch  on  this  merely 
technical  matter  because,  in  itself,  it  is  strongly  typical 
of  artistic  decline.  Marlow'e,  with  his  mighty  line, 
broke  away  from  the  "jigging  veins"  of  the  careless 
old  playwrights.  Then,  for  a  while,  blank  verse,  with 
growing  elasticity,  seemed  eternally  able  to  sustain 
any  burden  of  significance  which  the  poets  would  have 
it  bear.  By  and  by  it  began  to  bend  under  the  tasks 
imposed  on  it.  By  Webster's  time  it  had  left  the 
jigging  veins  far  behind;  but  at  that  same  time  its 
vigor  and  outburst  had  subsided  into  something  little 
different  from  the  daily  speech  of  men.  For  the  while 
blank  verse  had  reached  its  limits.  As  it  struggled 
against  them,  its  sustaining  power  weakened,  its  surg- 
ing spirit  seemed  almost  broken. 

But  all  this  should  not  distract  us  from  our  chief 
question  now;  namely,  what  we  may  best  believe  the 
double  change  in  Shakspere's  utterances  to  signify. 
From  a  buoyant  poet  he  became  a  tragic,  and  finally 
a  romantic.     The  first  impulse  of  critics  who  recog- 


THE    DRAMA  55 

nized  this  course  of  his  development  was  to  beheve 
it  due  to  his  own  spiritual  experience.  Without 
question  it  may  thus  be  explained.  Suppose,  for  ex- 
ample, that,  unwelcomely  married  at  Stratford,  he 
came  to  London,  and  made  his  way  there,  and  met 
some  woman  of  higher  rank  than  he  had  known  be- 
fore, and  fell  in  love  with  her;  that  he  found  her 
faithless,  and  suffered  accordingly;  and  finally  that  he 
surmounted  the  suffering.  Then  consider  some  of  his 
heroines — Juliet,  Portia,  Beatrice ;  the  haunting  doubts 
about  Hero ;  the  dark  lady  of  the  Sonnets ;  Ophelia, 
Cressida,  Desdemona;  the  daughters  of  Lear;  Lady 
Macbeth ;  and  Cleopatra.  Here  are  keys,  it  might  seem, 
with  which  he  unlocked  chamber  after  chamber  of 
his  heart.  And  then  came  Imogen,  and  Miranda,  and 
Perdita,  like  the  glowing  rays  of  some  serene  sunset. 
Whatever  the  truth,  there  is  hardly  anywhere  a  more 
consistent  expression  of  the  stages  through  which  a 
lover  passes  who  yields  himself  reverently  to  the  fas- 
cination of  a  woman;  who  finds  her,  after  a  while,  an 
object  of  doubt ;  who  then  has  the  agony  to  know  her 
certainly  unworthy;  yet  who  ends  by  rising  from  the 
depths  in  which  all  this  misery  has  plunged  him,  and 
by  finding  consolation  in  charity  and  in  self-mastery. 
All  of  which  conjectural  story  hangs  upon  the  auto- 
biographic truth  of  those  sonnets  about  the  reprehen- 
sible lady  with  dark  hair. 

Mr.  Sidney  Lee,  as  we  saw,  has  finally  demonstrated 
how  unlikely  it  is  that  these  sonnets  have  personal 


56         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

origin.  At  least  it  is  certain  that  they  admirably 
follow,  and  develop  into  excellence,  a  literary  form 
which  other  men  had  not  long  before  made  the 
fashion.  There  is  no  need  to  assume  that  they  re- 
veal a  new  Shakspere.  They  are  explicable  if  we 
regard  him  still  as  that  supremely  imitative  man  of 
letters  whose  experimental  work  had  proved  him  so 
versatile;  whose  impulse,  from  the  beginning,  had 
been  not  to  express  himself — if,  indeed,  he  had  any 
conscious  self  to  express — but  only  to  do  incomparably 
better  things  which  more  adventurously  original  men 
had  already  done  well. 

A  young  American  scholar  whose  name  has  hardly 
yet  crossed  the  Atlantic — Professor  Ashley  Horace 
Thorndike — has  lately  made  some  studies  in  dra- 
matic chronology  which  go  far  to  confirm  the  un- 
romantic  conjecture  that  to  the  end  Shakspere  re- 
mained imitative,  and  little  else.  Professor  Thorn- 
dike,  for  example,  has  shown  with  convincing  proba- 
bility that  certain  old  plays  concerning  Robin  Hood 
proved  popular;  a  little  later,  Shakspere  produced  the 
woods  and  the  outlaws  of  "As  You  Like  It."  The 
question  is  one  of  pure  chronology ;  and  pure  chronol- 
ogy has  convinced  me,  for  one,  that  the  forest  scenes 
of  Arden  were  written  to  fit  available  costumes  and 
properties — that  the  green  raiment  of  the  banished 
duke  was  an  Elizabethan  prototype  of  the  tubs  o! 
Mr.  Vincent  Crummies.  Again,  Professor  Thorndike 
has   shown  that   Roman   subjects   grew   popular,   and 


THE    DRAMA  57 

tragedies  of  revenge,  such  as  Marston's;  a  little  later 
Shakspere  wrote  "J^ilius  Caesar"  and  "Hamlet." 
With  much  more  elaboration,  Professor  Thorndike 
has  virtually  proved  that  the  romances  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher — different  both  in  motive  and  in  style 
from  any  popular  plays  which  had  preceded  them — 
were  conspicuously  successful  on  the  London  stage 
before  Shakspere  began  to  write  romances.  It  seems 
likely,  therefore,  that  "Cymbeline,"  which  less  careful 
chronology  had  conjectured  to  be  a  model  for  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  was,  in  fact,  imitated  from  models 
which  they  had  made.  In  other  words,  Professor 
Thorndike  has  shown  that  we  may  account  for  all  the 
changes  in  Shakspere,  after  1600,  by  merely  assuming 
that  the  most  skilful  and  instinctive  imitator  among 
the  early  Elizabethan  dramatists  remained  till  the  end 
an  instinctively  imitative  follower  of  fashions  set  by 
others. 

Incomparably  more  simple  I  find  this  explanation 
than  the  old,  romantic  one;  and  incomparably  more 
significant,  as  well,  to  anyone  who  has  been  perplexed 
to  know  why  Shakspere's  work,  arranged  in  chrono- 
logic order,  proves  so  broadly  typical  of  literary  evo- 
lution. If  we  clearly  understand  that  he  chanced  to' 
live  at  a  time  when  the  Elizabethan  drama  passed 
through  almost  its  whole  course  from  "Tamburlaine" 
to  the  "White  Devil";  and  if  we  admit  that  his  per- 
sistent tendency  was  to  imitate  changing  fashions, 
there  is  no  puzzle  left.     As  students  of  literary  his- 


58         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

tory  we  have  only  to  sketch  in  details  of  the  picture 
which  Shakspere's  career  comprehends  in  outline. 

In  this  task  no  guide  is  more  helpful  than  that 
preface  of  Webster's,  published,  as  we  have  seen,  just 
as  Shakspere  stopped  writing.  "Without  wrong  to 
be  named  the  last,"  you  will  remember,  he  mentions 
Shakspere,  carelessly  grouped  with  Dekker  and  Hey- 
wood,  only  after  he  has  somewhat  more  respectfully 
named  Chapman,  Jon  son,  and  Beaumont  and  Fletcher. 

Of  the  six  men  thus  hastily  mentioned  by  Webster, 
four  began  their  careers  as  dramatists  before  1600. 
We  may  find  it  convenient  to  consider  them  first,  and, 
indeed,  to  mention  one  or  two  other  men,  whom 
Webster  neglects,  before  we  turn  to  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher.  For  these  slightly  earlier  writers  indicate 
only  the  disintegration  of  the  Elizabethan  drama.  It 
is  in  the  plays  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  in  those  of 
Webster  himself,  and  in  those  of  men  who  followed 
a  little  after  1612,  that  the  decadence  and  exhaustion 
of  the  drama  become  unmistakable. 

First,  then,  for  Chapman,  eldest  and  longest-lived 
of  them  all.  "That  full  and  heightened  style  of  ]\Ias- 
ter  Chapman"  was  the  ray  of  light  he  cast  by  which 
Webster  would  have  his  own  work  read.  As  you 
turn  page  after  page  of  the  three  fat  little  ill-printed 
volumes  in  which  Chapman's  copious  utterances  are 
most  easily  accessible,  you  feel  Webster's  criticism 
just.  Only  one  of  these  volumes  comprises  Chapman's 
dramatic  work;  the  others  contain  his  great  version 


THE    DRAMA  59 

of  Homer,  his  completion  of  Marlowe's  "Hero  and 
Leander,"  and  sundry  original  poems.  Neither  these 
original  poems  nor  his  plays  have  truly  survived ;  it 
is  only  as  translator  of  Homer  that  anyone  reads 
Chapman  now.  As  translator  of  Homer,  however,  he 
remains  eminent.  We  need  only  recall  Keat's  sonnet 
to  be  assured  that,  whatever  the  verdict  of  modern 
scholarship,  Chapman's  translation  is  a  great  Eliza- 
bethan poem.  After  the  manner  of  his  time,  Chap- 
man held  Homer  at  once  the  earliest  and  the  greatest 
of  poets,  and  he  believed  poets  to  be  literally  the 
vehicles  of  divine  inspiration.  In  translating  Homer, 
accordingly,  he  felt  himself  a  conduit  of  divine  truth ; 
and  as  such  he  seems  to  have  held  himself  most  wor- 
thy of  lasting  esteem.  Indeed,  he  himself  virtually 
asserts  this  conviction,  in  peculiarly  characteristic 
terms.  On  the  quaint  title-page  which  preserves  his 
portrait,  he  calls  himself  "Homeri  Metaphrastes." 
That  last  word  tells  something  of  what  Webster  had 
in  mind  when  he  characterized  Chapman's  style.  One 
sees  instantly  what  "Metaphrastes"  means ;  but  when 
I  looked  for  it  once  in  some  Latin  and  Greek  diction- 
aries, I  could  not  find  it.  Doubtless  Chapman  found 
it  somewhere;  and  very  probably  he  chose  it  mostly 
because  the  place  where  he  found  it  was  a  little  out 
of  the  way.  He  liked  the  word  because  it  was  more 
full  and  heightened  than  any  obvious  one. 

A  scholar  meanwhile,  this  same  word  shows  him; 
and  when  he  turned  himself  to  poetry  he  wrote  in  a 


6o         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

spirit  of  didactic  pedantry.  His  plays  are  as  free  as 
any  in  the  language  from  the  artificial  restraints  of 
pseudo-classic  form;  but  so  far  as  human  interest  goes, 
they  are  as  lifeless  as  the  most  slavish  parody  of 
Plautus  or  Seneca  ever  made  by  anybody.  His  come- 
dies are  confused  masses  of  conventional  intrigue.  Of 
his  tragedies,  the  most  memorable  translate  into  ten 
acts  of  pompous  declamation  an  almost  contemporary 
tale  of  French  life — the  same  which  Dumas,  some  fifty 
years  ago,  awakened  into  the  perennial,  if  trivial,  vi- 
tality of  "La  Dame  de  Monsoreau."  The  plays  of 
Chapman  could  never  have  been  popular.  In  the  ded- 
ication of  the  "Revenge  of  Bussy  d'Ambois"  he  inci- 
dentally tells  us  why :  "For  the  authentical  truth  of 
either  person  or  action,"  he  writes,  "who  (worth  the 
respecting)  will  expect  it  in  a  poem,  whose  subject  is 
not  truth,  but  things  like  truth?  .  .  .  material 
instruction,  elegant  and  sententious  excitation  to  vir- 
tue, and  deflection  from  her  contrary,  being  the  soul, 
limbs,  and  limits  of  an  authentical  tragedy."  Accord- 
ingly, when,  in  the  very  tragedy  which  he  thus  de- 
fends, he  was  moved  to  touch  on  poetry — and  a  true 
poet,  he  honestly  held,  must  be  divinely  inspired — we 
find  his  inspiration  breathing  out  the  following  lines : 

As  worthiest  poets 
Shun  common  and  plebeian  forms  of  speech, 
Every  illiberal  and  affected  phrase 
To  clothe  their  matter;  and  together  tie 
Matter  and  form,  with  art  and  decency ; 
So  worthiest  women  should  shun  vulgar  guises. 


THE    DRAMA  6i 

Compare  these  cool  lucubrations  with  the  passionate 
idealism  of  what  Marlowe,  who  was  younger  than 
Chapman  in  years,  as  well  as  in  spirit,  had  uttered 
concerning  poets,  in  "Tamburlaine,"  a  good  while 
before : 

If  all  the  pens  that  ever  poets  held 
Had  fed  the  feeling  of  their  masters'  thoughts, 
And  every  sweetness  that  inspir'd  their  hearts, 
Their  minds,  and  muses  on  admired  themes ; 
If  all  the  heavenly  quintessence  they  still 
From  their  immortal  flowers  of  poesy, 
Wherein,  as  in  a  mirror,  we  perceive 
The  highest  reaches  of  a  human  wit ; 
If  these  had  made  one  poem's  period. 
And  all  combin'd  in  beauty's  worthiness, 
Yet  should  there  hover  in  their  restless  heads 
One  thought,  one  grace,  one  wonder,  at  the  least. 
Which  into  words  no  virtue  could  digest. 

Compare  Chapman's  lines  with  what  Shakspere — 
like  Marlowe,  younger  than  Chapman — had  sung  of 
poetry  in  the  "Midsummer  Night's  Dream" : 

The  lunatic,  the  lover  and  the  poet 

Are  of  imagination  all  compact : 

One  sees  more  devils  than  vast  hell  can  hold; 

That  is  the  madman :  the  lover,  all  as  frantic, 

Sees  Helen's  beauty  in  a  brow  of  Egypt : 

The  poet's  eye,  in  a  fine  frenzy  rolling, 

Doth  glance  from  heaven  to  earth,  from  earth  to  heaven, 

And  as  imagination  bodies  forth 

The  forms  of  things  unknown,  the  poet's  pen 

Turns  them  to  shapes  and  gives  to  airy  nothing 

A  local  habitation  and  a  name. 


62         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

Compare  Chapman's  lines  even  with  what  Ben  Jon- 
son  had  written  of  poetry  in  the  "Poetaster" : 

If  she  be 
True-bom,  and  nursed  with  all  the  sciences,     .    .    , 
She  can  so  mould  Rome  and  her  monuments 
Within  the  liquid  marble  of  her  lines 
That  they  shall  live,  fresh  and  miraculous, 
Even  when  they  mix  with  innovating  dust. 

You  can  hardly  help  feeling  the  difference  between 
Chapman's  lines  and  all  the  others;  and  feeling  it, 
you  will  surely  feel  where  this  crabbed,  wise,  didactic 
Chapman  belongs,  with  that  full  and  heightened  style 
which  makes  him,  some  hold,  the  dramatic  moralist 
best  worth  pondering  after  Shakspere  himself. 

"The  laboured  and  understanding  works  of  Master 
Jonson,"  Webster  names  next.  "Works"  w^as  what 
Jonson  himself  called  his  writings  when,  four  years 
later,  he  collected  them  in  a  folio ;  and  the  name  gave 
rise  to  sundry  jests,  for  the  greater  part  of  these 
avowed  works  took  the  form  of  plays.  This  Ben 
Jonson,  from  whom  they  proceeded,  chances  to  be 
the  best-recorded  literary  figure  of  his  tiine.  For  not 
only  do  his  voluminous  works  reveal  many  phases 
of  his  assertive  personality,  but  the  note-book  in  which 
William  Drummond,  of  Hawthornden,  set  down  the 
particulars  of  a  somewhat  unwelcome  visit  from 
Jonson,  in  1619,  preserves  detail  of  his  talk  with 
almost   Boswellian  fidelity.     Of  his   blustering,   half- 


THE    DRAMA  63 

bibulous  assertions,  the  most  familiar,  and  perhaps  the 
most  characteristic  is,  that  "Shakspere  wanted  art." 
Preposterous  as  the  statement  now  seems,  it  was  one 
which  Jonson  would  seriously  have  maintained,  there- 
by implicitly  defining  his  own  position  in  the  history 
of  our  dramatic  literature.  Among  the  later  Eliza- 
bethan playwrights — "Every  Man  in  His  Humour," 
his  first  published  play,  was  acted  in  1598 — Jonson 
was  the  most  sturdy  upholder  of  such  pseudo-classic 
standards  as  imposed  themselves  on  the  theatres  of 
France  and  of  Italy. 

In  fact,  Jonson  was  thorough  master  of  two  things 
— of  the  later  Roman  classics  and  of  vernacular  Eng- 
lish. Convivial  in  habit,  too,  and  on  friendly  terms 
with  people  of  every  social  class,  he  knew  the  out- 
ward aspect  of  Elizabethan  London  remarkably  well. 
The  paradox  of  his  work,  accordingly,  is  pretty  deep; 
the  actual  life  which  he  knew,  and  of  which  he  labori- 
ously endeavored  to  record  the  meaning,  was  the  life 
of  a  Renaissance,  full  of  youthful  ardor.  The  terms 
in  which  he  strove  to  express  this  meaning  were  often 
those  of  an  almost  senile  foreign  literature.  His  mood 
is  apt  to  be  that  of  the  Roman  satirists — of  Juvenal 
or  of  Martial,  who  were  historically  men  of  a  world- 
decadence;  he  often  translates  their  very  words  into 
the  free  vernacular  terms  of  an  English  whose  history, 
in  his  day,  was  not  past  but  future. 

Like  his  fellow-scholar.  Chapman,  he  held  that  a 
poet  is  essentially  a  teacher;  and  far  more  than  Chap- 


64         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

man — more,  indeed,  than  any  other  of  the  dramatists 
— he  maintained  and  proclaimed  doctrinal  orthodoxy 
of  form.  In  his  introduction  to  "Sejanus,"  he  stoutly 
writes :  "If  it  be  objected,  that  what  I  publish  is  no 
true  poem,  in  the  strict  laws  of  time,  I  confess  it;  as 
also  in  the  want  of  a  proper  chorus ;  whose  habits  and 
moods  are  such  and  so  difficult,  as  not  any,  whom  I 
have  seen,  since  the  ancients,  no,  not  they  who  have 
most  presently  affected  laws,  have  yet  come  in  the 
way  of.  .  .  .  If  in  truth  of  argument,  dignity  of 
persons,  gravity  and  height  of  elocution,  fulness  and 
frequency  of  sentence,  I  have  discharged  the  other 
offices  of  a  tragic  writer,  let  not  the  absence  of  those 
forms  be  imputed  to  me."  And  he  goes  on  to  refer 
his  copious  annotations  to  the  editions  of  Tacitus,  Sue- 
tonius, and  the  rest,  which  he  followed.  And  Shak- 
spere,  a  little  while  before,  had  swiftly  turned  passages 
from  North's  Plutarch  into  his  freely  English  "Julius 
Csesar,"  half  chronicle-history,  half  tragedy  of  re- 
venge. Shakspere  never  troubled  himself  about  either 
the  rules  of  classical  form  or  the  authenticity  of  his 
historical  material.  If  art  be  really  what  Jonson  evi- 
dently maintained  it  to  be,  Shakspere — thank  God — 
really  lacked  art. 

This  art,  this  conscious  setting  forth  of  his  material 
in  accordance  with  what  he  believed  to  be  absolute 
law,  is  the  quality  in  which  Jonson  excels.  He  was 
far  enough  from  Puritanism ;  but  no  Puritan  ever 
obeyed  more  dominant  conscience.     He  did  things  not 


THE    DRAMA  65 

as  he  felt  like  doing  them,  but  as  he  laboriously  came 
to  understand  that  they  ought  to  be  done. 

Yet  his  plays,  whatever  their  comparative  rigidity 
in  the  midst  of  their  freely  romantic  surroundings,  are 
not  a  bit  like  the  pseudo-classic  plays  of  France  or 
Italy.  The  reasons  for  this  I  conceive  to  be  several. 
In  the  first  place,  as  is  well  known,  Jonson's  theory  of 
comedy  required  that  each  personage  should  embody 
some  characteristic  trait  to  the  exclusion  of  others. 
In  the  language  of  his  time,  the  title  of  his  first 
comedy  is  an  apt  motto  for  them  all.  Every  man, 
throughout  Jonson,  is  in  his  humor ;  the  leading  pecu- 
liarity of  each  and  all  is  emphasized,  in  the  spirit  of 
Roman  satire,  until  each  and  all  become  monstrosities, 
or  at  best  caricatures.  In  the  second  place,  as  I  have 
said  before,  Jonson  was  completely  saturated  with 
the  temper  of  decadent  Roman  literature.  So  his 
humorous  characters  were  generally  taken  not  so 
much  from  the  London  life  he  knew  so  well  as  from 
the  records  of  a  totally  different  phase  of  a  different 
civilization.  The  annotated  editions  of  his  works  re- 
veal, again  and  again,  passages  directly  translated 
from  ancient  texts.  As  his  contemporaries  trans- 
lated stories  into  terms  of  speech  and  action,  so  he 
translated  the  "gravity  and  height  of  elocution,  ful- 
ness and  frequency  of  sentence"  which  took  his  fancy 
in  the  course  of  his  studies;  and  these  he  translated 
into  free  terms  of  vernacular  Elizabethan  English.  It 
is  the  consummate  idiom  of  his  English  which  pre- 


66         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

vents  us  from  instantly  recognizing  how  far  from 
English  are  the  thoughts  and  emotions  which  it  fre- 
quently clothes.  His  consummate  mastery  of  Eng- 
lish vernacular  is  what  makes  his  works  seem,  as  in 
this  aspect  they  are,  so  completely  Elizabethan. 

Compared  with  any  other  Elizabethan  plays,  all  the 
while,  they  are  very  heavy  reading;  and  for  a  long 
time  I  was  puzzled  to  account  for  the  difficulty  of 
which  I  was  conscious  whenever  I  turned  to  them. 
The  clue  came  at  last  from  Drummond's  notes.  Jon- 
son,  it  seems,  was  a  ghost-seer;  the  spirit  of  his  son 
once  appeared  to  him;  again,  he  would  lie  awake  of 
nights,  watching  the  visible  Turks  and  Tartars  fight 
about  his  great  toe.  Clearly,  his  imagination  was  un- 
usually visual.  Now,  in  reading  Shakspere  and  the 
rest,  one  habitually  thinks  not  of  what  their  characters 
looked  like,  but  of  how  each  of  the  personages  felt; 
the  general  temper  of  the  Elizabethan  drama  is  not 
that  of  outward  observation,  it  is  that  of  inward  sym- 
pathy. Essentially  the  dramatists  were  true  poets, 
not  painters  at  all.  Did  this  visualizing  power  of 
Jonson's,  I  asked  myself,  perhaps  mean  that,  without 
knowing  it,  he  conceived  his  scenes  externally,  in  the 
spirit  rather  of  a  painter  than  of  a  poet?  The  ensu- 
ing experiment,  of  course,  had  only  the  authority  of 
a  single  personal  experience;  but  that  experience  sur- 
prised me.  I  had  never  found  "Julius  Caesar"  dull; 
reading  "Sejanus"  in  such  mood  as  that  in  which  one 
reads  "J^l^^s  Caesar,"  I  had  never  found  "Sejanus" 


THE    DRAMA  67 

tolerable.  Now  I  turned  to  "Sejanus"  with  a  delib- 
erate effort  not  to  sympathize  with  the  characters,  but 
to  visualize  them;  not  to  understand  but  to  observe. 
The  change  in  effect  was  such  that,  as  I  have  just  re- 
minded myself  from  an  old  note-book,  the  play  kept 
me  up  long  past  bedtime;  and  "Julius  Caesar"  never  did 
that.  In  truth,  I  have  come  to  believe,  Jonson,  as  a 
dramatist,  was  really  not  a  poet  but  a  painter. 

You  will  best  feel  what  I  mean,  perhaps,  if  you  turn 
to  the  one  great  play  which  he  wrote  after  Webster's 
comment  on  him  saw  the  light.  This  "Bartholomew 
Fair"  seems  really  inspired  by  his  experience  of  low 
life  in  London.  Compared  with  the  tavern  scenes  in 
"Henry  IV.,"  however,  or  even  with  such  plays  as 
Middleton's  comedies  of  city  life,  it  seems  ponderously 
confused,  bewildering,  inhuman.  But  recall  your 
Hogarth ;  and  with  Hogarth's  consummate  caricatures 
of  Georgian  England  floating  in  your  fancy,  turn  to 
"Bartholomew  Fair"  again.  If  your  wits  work  like 
mine,  you  will  find  it,  thus  approached,  quivering  with 
unsuspected  vitality.  You  will  feel,  beyond  the  range 
of  doubt,  that  if  Ben  Jonson  had  chanced  to  be  master 
of  his  pencil  rather  than  of  his  pen,  he  would  have 
left  us  records  of  Elizabethan  London  as  vivid  as 
those  which  Hogarth  left  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
All  unknowing,  Ben  Jonson  was  at  heart  a  painter. 

An  accident  of  language  in  America — I  am  not 
sure  whether  it  extends  to  England — has  made  the 
word  artist  primarily  suggest  the  art  of  painting.    Had 


68         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

I  just  said  that  Jonson  was  at  heart  an  artist,  the 
word,  in  America,  would  have  intimated  ahnost  ex- 
actly what  I  meant.  Even  in  America,  meanwhile, 
it  would  have  intimated  more,  too ;  for  the  word  in- 
cludes, of  course,  all  fine  art.  Whoever,  when  he 
attempts  expression,  attempts  to  express  himself  in 
accordance  with  the  laws  of  truth  and  of  beauty,  works 
in  an  artistic  spirit.  And  in  the  range  of  Elizabethan 
drama,  just  as  Chapman,  with  his  full  and  heightened 
style,  is  probably  the  most  pregnant  moralist,  so  Jon- 
son is  assuredly  the  most  conscientious  artist. 

This  art  of  Jonson's  appears  not  only  in  his  plays. 
It  appears  also  in  the  Masques  with  which,  through 
the  years  of  his  laureateship,  he  so  steadily  delighted 
the  Court;  it  appears,  as  well,  in  his  masterly  lyrics, 
and  in  those  extracts  from  his  note-books — called 
"Discoveries"  when  he  printed  them — which  prove 
him  a  consummate  master  of  prose  too.  Of  these 
we  cannot  reason  now ;  their  place  in  our  study  is 
elsewhere.  Now  it  is  sufficient  to  be  assured  that 
by  Webster's  time  "the  laboured  and  understanding 
works  of  Master  Jonson"  had  proved  him,  in  principle 
if  not  in  achievement,  the  most  sturdy  artist  yet 
known  to  English  letters.  But  sturdy  art  can  do  little 
more  than  pregnant  moralizing  to  make  vitally  popu- 
lar drama.  And  the  popular  drama  of  England  was 
alive. 

Examples  of  what  it  was  may  be  found  in  the  frag- 
ments which  survive  of  "the  right  happy  and  copious 


THE    DRAMA  69 

industry  of  Master  Dekker  and  Master  Heywood." 
Webster,  you  will  remember,  grouped  them  with 
Shakspere  "(without  wrong  to  be  named  last)." 
And,  with  a  little  hesitation,  we  may  once  more  find 
his  critical  epithets  well  chosen.  Copious  they  both 
were;  it  is  recorded  somewhere  of  Heywood  that  for 
years  he  never  allowed  a  day  to  pass  without  at  least 
one  written  page,  and  by  1633,  as  he  stated  in  the 
preface  to  his  "English  Traveller,"  he  had  had  "either 
an  entire  hand,  or  at  least  a  main  finger,"  in  two 
hundred  and  twenty  tragi-comedies.  Industry,  of  a 
certain  kind,  this  surely  implies;  and  if  we  take  the 
word  "happy"  in  its  sense  of  "careless,"  we  can  hardly 
find  a  better  description  than  Webster's  of  the  kind 
of  industry  which  Dekker  and  Heywood  exemplify. 

Both  began  their  happily  and  copiously  industrious 
careers  before  1600;  both,  in  fact,  were  almost  ex- 
actly contemporary  with  Jonson;  both,  like  Jonson, 
wrote  on  and  on  in  the  times  of  James  I. ;  both,  like  him, 
died  under  King  Charles.  And  neither  seems  so  to  have 
changed  with  the  passing  of  years  as  ever  to  have 
lost  the  quality  which  makes  one  feel  both  of  them 
Elizabethan  to  the  end.  Neither,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  great.  For  that  very  reason,  perhaps,  they  more 
clearly  embody  the  general  spirit  of  their  time.  Yet 
they  are  not  quite  contemporaries  of  the  earlier  Eliza- 
bethans, with  whom  Shakspere  began  his  work.  For 
one  thing,  you  can  far  sooner  feel  the  limits  of  these 
slightly  later  men. 


70         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

Of  the  two,  Dekker  seems  the  elder  in  temper.  In 
all  probability,  too,  he  was  the  more  habitually  col- 
laborative— a  fact  which  makes  him  a  trifle  the  less 
distinct.  Yet  recall  his  "Gull's  Horn  Book,"  in  fact 
only  a  "right  happy"  adaptation  from  a  Dutch  pamph- 
let, yet  the  treasury  which  preserves  some  of  our  most 
vivid  records  of  Elizabethan  London;  and  remember 
his  "Shoemaker's  Holiday,"  that  carelessly  whole- 
some romantic  comedy  of  'prentice  tradition ;  or  sur- 
render yourself  to  the  careless  extravagances  of  his 
fairy-tale,  "Old  Fortunatus,"  or  to  the  "humorous" 
vagaries  of  his  "Honest  Whore."  You  need  go  no 
further  to  feel  Dekker  not  only  Elizabethan,  but  him- 
self, too.  He  had  a  quality  w^hich  we  might  now^a- 
days  call  journalistic;  if  newspapers  had  existed  in 
his  time,  he  would  have  been  a  jewel  of  a  reporter. 
He  had  the  charm  of  kindly  good-fellowship.  And, 
being  Elizabethan  all  the  while,  he  not  only  had  lyric 
power,  but  now  and  again  he  made  memorable  phrases. 
The  best  of  these  had  already  been  published  for  eight 
years  when  Webster  wrote  of  him  so  gently — they  are 
in  almost  the  last  speech  of  the  first  part  of  the  "Honest 
Whore" : 

Patience,  my  lord !  why,  'tis  the  soul  of  peace ; 
Of  all  the  virtues  'tis  nearest  kin  to  Heaven. 
It  makes  men  look  like  gods.     The  best  of  men 
That  e'er  vi^ore  earth  about  him,  was  a  suflferer, 
A  soft,  meek,  patient,  humble,  tranquil  spirit, 
The  first  true  gentleman  that  ever  breathed. 


THE    DRAMA  71 

Compare  these  lines  with  the  title  of  the  play  from 
which  they  are  culled.  Remember  that  both  are  char- 
acteristic of  their  author,  and  you  will  begin  to  feel 
what  manner  of  man  Dekker  was.  To  remind  your- 
selves of  where  he  belongs  in  literature,  the  while, 
compare  his  comments  on  patience  with  Portia's  lovely 
rhetoric  about  the  "quality  of  mercy,"  which  had  first 
been  printed  four  years  earlier. 

Like  Dekker,  Heywood — who  wrote  on  well  into 
King  Charles's  time — retained  to  the  end  his  Eliza- 
bethan quality.  And  the  right  happy  spirit  of  his 
copious  industry  appears  in  words  which  he  published 
more  than  twenty  years  after  Webster  had  invoked 
his  example.  "My  plays,"  he  says,  "are  not  exposed 
unto  the  world  in  volumes,  to  bear  the  title  of  works ; 
one  reason  is,  that  many  of  them  by  shifting  and 
change  of  companies  have  been  negligently  lost ;  .  .  . 
and  ...  it  never  was  any  great  ambition  in 
me  to  be  in  this  kind  voluminously  read."  Of  his 
writing  of  other  than  dramatic  kinds,  meanwhile, 
some  notion  may  be  had  from  the  fact  that  in  1624 
he  produced  a  folio  of  more  than  four  hundred  pages 
"concerning  women,"  of  which  he  stated  that  between 
its  first  conception  and  its  final  publication  there  had 
elapsed  only  seventeen  weeks.  Such  of  his  plays  as 
are  left  us — not  more,  at  most,  than  one-tenth  of  all 
he  made — are  various  in  kind :  chronicle-histories,  ex- 
travagant romances,  masques,  and,  most  individually, 
what  he  called  tragi-comedies.     Nowadays  we  should 


72         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

be  more  apt  to  call  them  melodramas,  dealing  with 
contemporary  life.  One  of  them  is  almost  a  master- 
piece: his  "Woman  Killed  with  Kindness"  tells  with 
something  like  permanent  veracity  a  story  of  domestic 
tragedy,  such  as  the  records  of  his  time  show  not  to 
have  been  infrequent.  Even  from  this  masterpiece, 
however,  one  derives  an  impression  rather  of  what 
Heywood  has  told  than  of  how  he  has  told  it.  Among 
the  old  playwrights,  he  is  noteworthy  for  lack  of 
salient  phrase.  Yet  his  style  remains  Elizabethan  in 
its  freedom,  its  spontaneity,  its  ease,  its  adequacy. 
And  two  characteristics  which  appear  in  the  "Woman 
Killed  with  Kindness"  pervade  his  other  plays  too. 
The  first  of  these  is  the  remarkable  truth  to  life  of 
certain  episodes.  Nonsensical,  for  example,  as  much 
of  his  "Fair  Maid  of  the  West"  undoubtedly  is,  you 
can  find  in  its  opening  scenes  a  unique  record  of  the 
surroundings  from  which  old  adventurers  put  forth 
for  the  Spanish  Main.  I,  for  one,  can  never  think 
of  them  without  some  such  feeling  as  might  come  from 
actual  memory  of  gusty  salt  breezes,  with  mute  mes- 
sages of  the  Indies  beyond  the  seas.  "Heywood,"  I 
find  in  an  old  note-book,  "was  no  master-poet,  sound- 
ing the  depths  of  nature;  for  that  very  reason,  he  can 
carelessly  show  us  daily  life  the  more  truly."  This 
by  itself  would  be  enough  to  make  him  memorable. 
But  his  other  characteristic  power  is  better  still.  Amid 
all  the  right  happy  carelessness  of  his  copious  industry, 
he  was  able — as  his  pen  ran —  to  set  forth,  beyond  any 


THE    DRAMA  73 

other  of  the  playwrights  but  Shakspere,  the  charac- 
ter of  a  gentleman.  Some  of  Heywood's  gentlemen 
might  have  been  ancestors  of  Colonel  Newcome. 
Carelessly  popular  he  was,  spontaneous,  veracious, 
and  at  heart  gentle. 

We  have  now  glanced  at  the  four  Elizabethans, 
besides  Shakspere,  whom  Webster  cited  as  his  masters 
in  1612.  On  the  whole,  to  speak  paradoxically,  the 
most  marked  trait  which  they  possess  in  common  is 
their  diversity.  The  earlier  group  of  Elizabethan 
playwrights  makes  a  different  impression  from  this; 
Greene  and  Peele  and  Kyd  and  Marlowe  and  John 
Lily,  whatever  their  divergences,  one  remembers  to- 
gether, as  one  remembers  the  makers  of  Elizabethan 
lyrics;  all  together  were  breaking  from  the  bonds  of 
old  conventions.  This  subsequent  group — Chapman 
and  Jonson  and  Dekker  and  Hey  wood — began  their 
work  in  days  when  enfranchisement  was  won.  And 
enfranchisement  means  disintegration.  By  1612,  we 
can  perceive,  the  drama  was  already  disintegrant.  The 
story  to  come  is  a  story  of  decline. 


Ill 

THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  DRAMA. 

In  1600,  we  found,  Elizabethan  literature  indicated, 
above  all  else,  integrity  of  national  temper.  Through- 
out it  seemed  animated  by  a  common  spirit  of  buoyant 
experiment — spontaneous,  enthusiastic,  and  versatile; 
and  this  had  resulted  in  admirable  poetry,  lyric  and 
dramatic.  Such  a  condition  can  never  be  stationary. 
Within  twelve  years,  we  have  already  seen,  the  drama 
had  conspicuously  changed.  We  have  traced  the  career 
of  Shakspere  to  its  close;  and,  taking  for  our  guide 
the  preface  to  Webster's  "White  Devil,"  which  in  161 2 
mentioned  as  models,  by  whose  light  he  would  be 
read,  certain  other  dramatists  then  eminent,  we  have 
considered  such  as  these  as  had  begun  their  career 
before  the  seventeenth  century  opened  :  Chapman,  Jon- 
son,  Dekker,  and  Heywood.  These  men  we  found 
to  indicate  how  by  1612  the  elder  spirit  was  already 
disintegrating.  Each  of  them,  in  his  own  way, 
though  with  much  of  the  old  spontaneity  and  vigor, 
had  developed  a  style,  a  manner — a  lim.it,  if  you 
will — obviously  his  own.  Before  touching  on  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  the  remaining  masters  in  Webster's 

74 


THE    DRAMA  75 

list,  we  may  glance,  I  think,  at  two  other  dramatists 
whom  he  might  well  have  included  with  them,  among 
those  by  whose  light  we  should  read  him. 

One  is  Marston,  who  began  his  work  by  some  con- 
ventional satires,  and  then  turned  himself  to  the  stage. 
His  plays  are  careless,  and — at  least  to  me — repel- 
lently  disagreeable.  They  deserve  this  passing  men- 
tion only  because,  at  just  about  the  time  when  Shak- 
spere  turned  himself  from  the  perfection  of  comedy 
to  the  perfecting  of  tragedy,  they  testify  at  once  to 
the  fact  that  tragedy  became  temporarily  popular,  and 
to  what  a  detestable  thing  vulgar  treatment  of  tragedy 
can  be. 

The  other  contemporary  whom  Webster  neglected 
was  of  far  higher  power.  Middleton,  to  be  sure,  has 
not  retained  even  such  popularity  as  still  makes  faintly 
familiar  the  names  we  have  already  mentioned.  One 
can  easily  see  why.  Of  all  the  old  dramatists,  his 
natural  temper  seems  the  coldest,  the  least  sympa- 
thetic; and  although  he  could  bend  language  to  his 
meaning  with  the  best,  he  lacked  lyric  power.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  are  moments  when  one  feels 
Middleton's  mastery  of  situation  and  of  character  su- 
perior to  all  but  Shakspere's  own. 

He  was  apt  to  work  in  collaboration,  to  be  sure, 
particularly  with  Dekker,  and  with  one  or  both  of 
those  rather  indistinct  Rowleys,  whose  office  as  drama- 
tists seems  to  have  been  to  emphasize  the  merits  of 
other  men  by  interweaving  with  these  merits   their 


76         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

own  manifold  faults.  This  fact  of  collaboration  may 
have  been  one  reason  why  Middleton  failed  particu- 
larly to  attract  Webster's  attention;  another  reason 
may  be  found  in  the  probability  that  his  most  power- 
ful plays  were  made  later  than  1612.  But  he  certainly 
began  writing  before  1600;  and  with  equal  certainty 
he  wrote  memorably. 

Broadly  speaking,  his  work  falls  into  two  familiar 
groups  —  comedies  and  tragedies.  The  comedies, 
which  were  probably  the  earlier,  are  cleverly  con- 
structed, remarkably  easy  in  style  and  plausible  in 
effect,  firm  but  oddly  unsympathetic  in  character,  and 
— ^beyond  anything  on  which  we  have  touched  as  yet 
— deliberately  indecent.  None  of  the  old  dramatists 
is  conspicuous  for  purity;  Shakspere  himself,  far  and 
away  the  cleanest  of  them,  permitted  himself  plenty 
of  passages  which  nobody  could  publish  nowadays. 
In  the  work  of  Shakspere  and  of  the  other  earlier 
men,  the  while,  lubricity  seems  incidental,  unthinking, 
and  so  not  unwholesome.  In  Middleton,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  seems  essential,  deliberate,  corrupt. 

Accordingly,  when  one  turns  to  his  tragedies  one 
is  hardly  surprised  to  find  another  phase  of  corruption, 
of  palpable  decadence.  Particularly  in  "Women  Be- 
ware Women"  and  in  the  "Changeling,"  Middleton's 
portrayal  of  character  seems  second  only  to  that  of 
Shakspere.  The  difference  appears,  however,  when 
we  feel  that  strange,  insidious  heartlessness  which  pre- 
vents him,  despite  his  insight,  from  sympathizing  with 


THE    DRAMA  77 

the  personages  whom  he  creates.  It  appears  more 
saHently  still  when  we  grow  aware  that  the  only  sort 
of  character  which  seems  to  interest  Middleton  is 
evil.  With  all  Heywood's  right  happy  copiousness, 
we  found,  he  could  carelessly  tell  us  how  the  spirit 
of  a  gentleman  stays  changeless  through  the  ages. 
What  Middleton,  with  all  his  cool  deliberation,  could 
best  set  forth  is  how  a  woman  can  lapse  from  girl- 
hood to  harlotry.  In  tragedy  as  in  comedy,  he  shows 
us  the  depths  of  life — not  the  heights.  In  both,  too, 
he  lacks  the  touch  of  lyric  spontaneity  which  pervaded 
the  happy  copiousness  of  the  men  who  were  writing 
around  him.  And  thus,  standing  apart  from  the  rest, 
just  as  each  of  the  rest  stands  apart  from  the  others, 
he  stands  apart  from  all  on  whom  we  have  as  yet 
touched.  For  his  is  the  first  great  figure  to  signalize 
not  only  the  disintegration  of  the  drama  but  also  its 
imminent  decadence. 

Decadence,  beyond  question,  appears  throughout 
the  intermingled  work  of  the  last  two  masters  whom 
Webster  mentions  among  those  by  whose  light  he 
wishes  what  he  writes  may  be  read.  "The  no  less 
worthy  composures  of  the  both  worthily  excellent 
Master  Beaumont  and  Master  Fletcher"  is  his  phrase 
for  them;  in  which  words  it  is  hardly  fantastic  to 
discern  allusion  to  their  gentleness  of  birth.  Fletcher's 
father,  a  clergyman  who  in  Elizabeth's  time  attended 
Mary  Stuart  to  the  scaffold,  died  Bishop  of  London; 
and  Beaumont's,  a  country  gentleman  by  origin,  rose 


78        THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

to  be  a  judge  and  a  knight.  Among  the  old  dramatists 
no  others  are  known  to  have  Hved  so  httle 

lost  in  mists  and  fogs  of  people 
Noteless  and  out  of  name. 

The  mere  accident  of  rank,  however,  could  never  have 
given  them,  together  or  apart,  their  reputation  and 
influence.  More  than  twenty  years  after  Fletcher  died, 
and  more  than  thirty  after  the  death  of  Beaumont, 
Shirley,  in  his  introduction  to  the  first  folio  of  their 
plays,  could  write  of  the  book  as  "without  flattery, 
the  greatest  monument  of  the  scene  that  time  and 
humanity  have  produced."  and  therefore  as  bound  to 
"live,  not  only  the  crown  and  sole  reputation  of  our 
own,  but  the  stain  of  all  other  nations  and  languages." 
From  the  time,  not  yet  definitely  known,  when  they 
began  to  write  until  the  closing  of  the  theatres — and, 
indeed,  for  some  years  after  the  theatres  were  re- 
opened, at  the  Restoration — their  plays  seem  to  have 
been  decidedly  the  most  popular  in  the  language.  No 
one  else  could  draw  such  houses. 

Modern  criticism  has  attempted,  with  some  plausi- 
bility, to  distinguish  between  them.  In  "Philaster," 
for  example,  there  is  a  passage  concerning  death  which 
may  probably  be  attributed  to  Beaumont: 

'Tis  less  than  to  be  bom  ;  a  lasting  sleep ; 
A  quiet  resting  from  all  jealousy, 
A  thing  we  all  pursue ;  I  know,  besides, 
It  is  but  giving  over  of  a  game 
That  must  be  lost. 


THE    DRAMA  79 

Compare  this  with  a  similar  passage  in  "Thierry 
and  Theodoret,"  which  is  almost  certainly  by  Fletcher: 

*Tis  of  all  sleeps  the  sweetest. 
Children  begin  it  to  us,  strong  men  seek  it, 
And  kings  from  height  of  all  their  painted  glory 
Fall  like  spent  exhalations  to  this  centre ; 
And  those  are  fools  that  fear  it,  or  imagine 
A  few  unhandsome  pleasures  or  life's  profits 
Can  recompense  this  peace ;  and  mad  that  stay  it 
Till  age  blow  out  their  lights,  or  rotten  vapours 
Bring  them  dispersed  to  the  earth,     .     .     . 

You  can  hardly  help  feeling  a  difference  between 
these  two  passages,  not  only  in  formal  style  but  in 
temperamental  mood;  the  first  is  in  every  sense  the 
finer ;  the  latter  is  at  once  the  more  elaborately  rhetor- 
ical, the  more  palpably  sentimental,  and  somewhat  the 
sweeter.  At  the  same  time,  you  can  hardly  help  feel- 
ing that  the  passages  have  in  common  something 
deeper  than  their  differences.  Both  have  a  touch  of 
insidious,  charming  sentimentality.  In  both,  the  verse, 
with  an  almost  cloying  sweetness,  has  lost  that  note 
of  aspiring  grandeur  which  never  forsook  "Marlowe's 
mighty  line."  Yet  both  are  instantly  intelligible  and 
lingeringly  delightful.  We  shall  make  no  error  if  for 
a  moment  we  neglect  the  moderns,  and  follow  Webster 
and  Shirley  and  the  rest,  grouping  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  together. 

The  secret  of  their  popularity  is  not  hard  to  find. 
Beyond  any  of  the  men  we  have  considered  before — 


8o         THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

beyond  any,  I  think,  who  wrote  before  them — they 
were,  first  and  always,  men  with  a  cuhivated  instinct 
for  stage  effect.  More  sophisticated  than  their  prede- 
cessors, and  so  more  skilful,  they  were  never  ham- 
pered by  any  suspicion  of  ulterior  purpose.  They  were 
thorough  masters  of  the  theatre,  and  they  rested  con- 
tent with  that.  They  had  discovered  what  they  could 
do;  they  did  it  again  and  again,  seeking  freshness  of 
efifect,  not  like  the  elder  men  in  experiment,  but  in 
pretty  and  subtle  variations  on  familiar  themes.  Brill- 
iant they  surely  were;  sympathetic,  too,  both  with  the 
surface  of  their  characters  and  still  more  with  their 
audiences;  admirable  craftsmen  in  a  theatrical  way, 
and  accomplished  poets;  gentlemen,  as  well,  after  the 
fashion  of  their  time ;  but  never  troubled — and  so  never 
troublesome — with  any  deep  sense  that  life  has  signifi- 
cance. Their  dramatic  sense  meanwhile  was  so  strong 
that  their  plays,  occasionally  revived  in  private  ex- 
periment, still  hold  the  attention  of  an  audience  more 
readily  than  Shakspere's  own.  So  they  poured  out 
play  after  play — comedies,  melodramas,  tragedies,  bur- 
lesques, pastorals,  masques — with  no  hampering  con- 
science, but  with  keen  relish  for  all  manner  of  emo- 
tion, whether  this  sprang  from  frank  sensuality  and 
gross  sensationalism  or  from  the  exquisite  cadences 
of  lyric  poetry.  Beyond  the  rest,  they  indicate  a  Re- 
naissance past  the  zenith  of  its  strength,  but  not  of  its 
splendor.  With  them  we  are  in  that  fascinating  period 
of  nascent  decadence  which  foretells  the  end  of  any 


THE    DRAMA  8i 

school  of  art;  rejoicing  in  life  with  such  full  conscious- 
ness of  delight  as  could  not  come  before  and  yet  is 
destined  swiftly  to  become  dulled  and  jaded. 

So  no  wonder  they  took  the  stage  by  storm,  and 
held  it  long.  The  wonder  rather  is  that,  for  the  last 
two  hundred  years,  their  plays  have  been  so  little  acted. 
Yet,  as  one  ponders  over  their  pages,  the  wonder 
fades.  These  pages  are  full  of  beauties ;  except  Shak- 
spere,  none  of  their  fellow-dramatists  has  left  us  half 
so  rich  a  treasury  of  beautiful  phrases.  In  no  other, 
for  example,  would  you  easily  find  lines  so  instantly 
appealing  as  the  first  of  theirs  which  come  to  my  mind 
as  I  write — the  prayer  of  Caratach  before  the  battle 
in  "Bonduca" : 

Give  us  this  day  good  hearts,  good  enemies, 

Good  blows  o'  both  sides,  wounds  that  fear  or  flight 

Can  claim  no  share  in. 

And  the  other  fragments  I  have  quoted  already  are 
but  examples  of  thousands.  Yet  these,  as  one  reads, 
prove  not  only — like  the  prayer  in  Sidney's  "Arcadia" 
— mere  miracles  of  masterly  rhetoric.  They  prove, 
too,  imbedded — to  quote  one  of  themselves — in 

such  quaUties,  and  such  wild  flings, 
Such  admirable  imperfections, 

that  nowadays  many  good  folks  might  well  be  loath 
to  own  their  makers  for  brethren. 

A  phase  of  their  decadence,  by  the  way,   I  have 


82         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

unintentionally  illustrated  in  that  last  sentence.  Their 
verse  is  wonderfully  easy  and  sweet  and  spontaneous; 
yet  it  is  so  near  the  rhythm  of  prose  that  you  can 
often  imbed  it  in  a  modern  sentence  where  it  will 
instantly  sink  beneath  reach  of  the  ear.  Hardly  an 
imperfection  that,  to  be  sure;  or  at  least  not  of  a 
kind  instantly  to  indicate  why  they  are  neglected 
to-day.  An  incident  which  lately  occurred  will  tell 
that  story.  A  few  months  ago  a  friend  of  mine,  who 
had  long  and  deeply  delighted  in  their  poetry,  was 
asked  to  prepare  for  popular  reading  two  or  three 
plays  of  theirs,  which  he  was  left  free  to  select.  The 
man  in  question  has  never  impressed  me  as  a  prig;  yet 
after  some  weeks  of  hesitation,  he  declined  the  task 
because,  after  scrutiny,  he  could  find  none  of  their 
plays  which  he  was  willing  to  lay  before  the  general 
public  with  the  sanction  of  his  name.  One  and  all 
of  the  comedies  were  too  corrupt,  too  indecent.  They 
had  a  charm,  to  be  sure,  which  raised  them  above  the 
cold  obscenities  of  Middleton,  and  which  wakened  into 
romantic  or  sentimental  life  such  humors  as  in  the 
labored  and  understanding  comedies  of  Jonson  seem 
almost  monstrous.  But,  for  all  that,  they  were  as 
lewd  as  the  feebler,  and  therefore  baser,  comedies  of 
the  Restoration.  Yet,  if  you  attempted  to  expurgate 
them,  you  altered  them  beyond  recognition.  And  the 
case  with  the  other  than  comic  plays  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher  proved  little  better :  the  "Maid's  Trag- 
edy" dwells  on  hideously  cynical  seduction ;  the  "King 


THE    DRAMA  83 

and  No  King,"  on  incest;  "Valentinian,"  on  rape. 
Everywhere  you  find  poetic  beauties ;  everywhere  these 
grow  luxuriantly  from  a  festering  corruption  beneath. 
There  is  hardly  one  of  their  more  than  fifty  plays 
which  could  be  presented  to-day  without  such  ex- 
purgation as  should  leave  it  no  longer  itself.  And 
so,  perhaps,  our  English  stage  is  not  altogether  the 
poorer  for  having  lost  them. 

In  their  own  day,  to  be  sure,  the  stage  was  the 
richer  for  them.  Their  beauties  are  as  much  their 
own  as  their  vices,  and  were  equally  welcome  to  their 
public.  The  likeness  of  their  work  to  the  romances 
of  Shakspere — in  subject,  in  structure,  in  peculiarities 
of  verse — has  often  been  remarked;  and  they  have 
consequently  been  supposed  to  have  begun  by  skilful 
superficial  imitation  of  his  spiritually  ripest  phase. 
The  question  is  one  of  chronology,  not  yet  fixed  in 
detail;  but,  as  I  have  told  you  already,  the  studies 
of  my  friend.  Professor  Thorndike,  have  virtually 
proved  that  several  of  their  plays  must  have  been  in 
existence  decidedly  before  the  dates  commonly  as- 
signed to  "Cymbeline,"  the  "Tempest,"  or  the  "Win- 
ter's Tale."  If  he  is  right — and  I  believe  him  so — 
the  relation  commonly  thought  to  have  existed  between 
them  and  Shakspere  is  precisely  reversed.  Shakspere 
was  the  imitator,  not  they ;  indeed,  as  we  have  seen, 
he  was  from  the  beginning  an  imitator,  not  an  in- 
ventor. And  here  his  imitations  are  not  in  all  re- 
spects better  than  his  models.    The  comparative  super- 


84         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

ficiality  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  made  them  easy  to 
understand,  and  by  this  time  Shakspere  was  too  preg- 
nant a  poet  to  be  instantly  comprehensible.  Their 
insidious  corruption  of  temper,  too,  made  them  pep- 
per the  higher,  and  so  the  surer  to  please.  Shakspere's 
qualities  were  far  greater  and  deeper  than  theirs,  but 
theirs  were  more  popular,  more  amusing  than  his. 
Audiences  would  probably  have  preferred  them.  In 
which  fact  w^e  may  find,  if  we  choose,  a  reason  why, 
after  a  little  friendly  collaboration  with  Fletcher, 
Shakspere  may  have  withdrawn  from  a  professional 
career  in  w^hich  these  younger  men  proved  able  to 
attract  the  public  more  than  he  could. 

Beaumont  died  in  the  same  year  with  Shakspere; 
Fletcher  survived  until  1625 — his  later  plays  slightly 
exaggerating  the  decadent  traits  evident  in  those  which 
Beaumont  and  he  had  written  together.  The  change 
may  have  been  due  to  comparative  weakness  in 
Fletcher,  or  perhaps  to  the  hastening  decadence  of  his 
time,  or  to  the  mere  weight  of  accumulating  years. 
The  noteworthy  fact  about  these  last  of  the  men  whom 
Webster  mentioned  as  his  masters  is  that,  unlike  most 
of  their  forerunners,  they  began  their  work  better  than 
they  ended  it.  Marlowe's  best  plays  are  his  latest. 
Even  Shakspere's  romances  hold  their  own.  With 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  one  feels  not  a  growth  in 
power,  but  rather  a  slow,  gentle  decline. 

We  must  hasten  on  to  Webster.  We  have  now 
glanced  at  all  the  playwrights  by  whose  light  he  de- 


THE    DRAMA  85 

sired  to  be  read — at  Marston,  too,  and  Middleton,  and 
the  Rowleys.  There  is  only  one  other  earlier  name, 
I  think,  which  he  might  have  mentioned — that  of 
Cyril  Tourneur,  whose  reckless  tragedies,  coming  be- 
tween Marston's  and  Webster's — less  monstrously 
crude  than  the  former,  incalculably  less  profound  than 
the  latter — have  lately  appealed  to  the  kind  of  taste 
which  likes  to  be  called  decadent.  Webster  himself 
is  made  of  more  substantial  stuff.  In  power,  I  incline 
to  believe,  he  rises  above  all  the  other  playwrights  ex- 
cept Marlowe  and  Shakspere. 

But  human  power  has  its  historical  stages.  There 
are  moments  when,  like  Marlowe's  and  that  of  the 
lyric  poets  before  and  around  him,  it  exerts  itself  in 
breaking  old  bonds;  there  are  moments  when,  for  a 
little  while — as  with  Shakspere,  and  some  of  the  lesser 
men  at  whom  we  have  glanced — it  seems  free;  but 
there  must  swiftly  come  later  moments  when  self- 
consciousness  begins  to  be  inhibitory,  when  every  ef- 
fort seems  to  be  a  conscious  one  to  struggle  against 
the  tightening  force  of  new  bonds.  Webster's  power 
always  seems  thus  inhibited.  His  work  is  a  wonderful 
example  of  how,  in  any  school  of  art,  a  crushing 
sense  of  fact  is  sure  fatally  to  overpower  the  surgent 
imagination  which  has  lately  awakened  that  art  from 
lethargy  to  life. 

So  far  as  personal  record  goes,  Webster's  history 
is  shadowy;  and  among  the  few  plays  he  has  left  us, 
two  will  serve  our  purpose — the  colossal  sketch   he 


86         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

called  the  "White  Devil,"  and  the  later,  far  more 
finished,  "Duchess  of  Malfi."  At  first  sight,  both  seem 
almost  crabbedly  obscure;  on  fresh  readings  both  re- 
veal more  and  more  beauties.  But,  no  matter  how 
well  you  know  them,  neither  ever  approaches  the 
lucidity  of  Marlowe  or  of  Shakspere ;  and  this,  chiefly, 
I  think,  because  throughout  them  both  every  t(3ucli 
seems  to  have  demanded  conscious,  deliberate  effort. 
The  stories  of  both  are  Italian.  The  former  is  essen- 
tially historical ;  Vittoria  Accoramboni  was  alive  thirty 
years  before  this  dramatic  account  of  her  career  was 
printed.  The  "Duchess  of  Malfi"  comes  from  an  older 
story,  which  found  its  way  into  Paynter's  "Palace  of 
Pleasure" ;  in  atmosphere  and  treatment,  however,  the 
play,  though  by  far  the  more  elaborately  developed, 
resembles  the  other  so  closely  that  we  may  fairly 
consider  them  together,  choosing  our  characteristic 
examples  of  Webster  from  either. 

The  first  thing  which  reveals  his  inhibitory  sense 
of  fact  is  the  amazing  truth  to  actual  life  of  his  Italy. 
This  is  not  a  matter  of  historical  detail.  Webster 
makes  as  free  with  names  and  dates  and  recorded 
circumstances  as  any  of  his  fellows  made.  But  com- 
pare the  Italy  of  Webster's  "White  Devil"  with  the 
France  of  Chapman's  "Bussy  d'Ambois" — also  less 
than  thirty  years  past  when  the  play  about  it  was 
written.  Chapman's  France  is  an  impalpable  nowhere, 
peopled  with  stalking  utterers  of  his  full  and  height- 
ened style;  Webster's  Italy,  beside  it,  seems  as  accu- 


THE    DRAMA  87 

rately  local  as  that  of  Stendhal.  Again,  compare  this 
Italy  of  Webster's  with  that  of  Middleton,  who — 
perhaps  a  little  later — turned  the  story  of  Bianca 
Capello  into  "Women  Beware  Women."  For  all 
Middleton's  realism,  his  Florence  is  still  a  region  not 
quite  of  fact,  but  of  imagination  too ;  a  place  to  which 
one  might  have  journeyed  from  Romeo's  Verona  or 
from  Othello's  Venice.  By  its  side,  Webster's  Italy 
again  reminds  one  of  Stendhal's.  Though  it  be  fiction, 
it  has  a  value  almost  documentary. 

Now  this  Medicean  Italy  which  he  so  faithfully 
tried  to  set  forth  was  perhaps  the  most  complex  as 
well  as  the  most  corrupt  region  known  to  modern 
history.  Intrigue  within  intrigue  really  marked  it  as 
the  land  which  bred  Machiavelli  and  thus  gave  our 
language  an  adjective  to  enshrine  the  memory  of 
him.  A  sense  of  this  complexity  seems  to  have 
weighed  down  on  Webster  until  it  became  benumb- 
ing; he  always  seems  aware  of  how  very  much  he 
has  to  tell,  afraid  lest  he  shall  lose  some  thread  of  his 
labyrinthine  argument,  lest  he  shall  unduly  simplify 
deeds  and  characters  which  simplicity  w'ould  belie. 
He  never  approaches  unconscious  ease;  he  never  re- 
laxes into  sympathetic  humor;  there  are  no  Nurses 
in  his  Italian  world,  or  Mercutios.  There  are  won- 
derful villains,  though,  and  tenderly  pathetic  victims. 
The  evil  of  life  and  the  suffering — the  horror  and  the 
sadness — he  sets  forth  wonderfully.  His  work  is  full 
of  isolated   situations,   and  phrases,   and   touches   of 


88        THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

character  and  of  aphorism,  which  seem  almost  ulti- 
mate in  their  combined  power  and  truth  to  life.  What 
makes  the  total  effect  of  them  bewildering  is  that  he 
could  never  quite  fuse  them  into  organic  unity.  Again 
and  again,  he  throws  upon  his  readers  the  task  of 
composing,  if  so  they  may,  his  marvellous  fragments 
of  tragedy.  They  are  like  some  unfinished  mosaic, 
needing  a  flash  of  electric  fire  to  melt  their  outlines 
into  the  intelligible  unity  of  painting. 

Again,  in  a  very  different  way,  you  may  feel  Web- 
ster's inhibitory  sense  of  fact  in  obviously  imitative 
passages,  such  as  his  modest  preface  to  the  "White 
Devil"  calls  instant  attention  to.  You  will  remember, 
for  example,  how  the  dying  Desdemona  flickers  into 
an  instant  of  revived  life,  when  those  about  her  al- 
ready think  the  end  come: 

Emilia. 
Cassio,  my  lord,  hath  kill'd  a  young  Venetian, 
Call'd  Roderigo. 

Othello. 
Roderigo  kill'd ! 
And  Cassio  kill'd ! 

Emilia. 
No,  Cassio  is  not  kill'd. 

Othello. 
Not  Cassio  kill'd  !  then  murder's  out  of  tune, 
And  sweet  revenge  grows  harsh. 

Desdemona. 
O,  falsely,  falsely  murder'd  ! 
Emilia. 

Alas,  what  cry  is  that? 


THE    DRAMA  89 

Othello. 
That!  what? 

Emilia. 

Out,  and  alas  !  that  was  my  lady's  voice. 

Help  !  help,  ho  !     O  lady,  speak  again  ! 

Sweet  Desdemona  !     O  sweet  mistress,  speak  ! 

Desdemona. 
A  guiltless  death  I  die. 

Emilia. 
O,  who  hath  done  this  deed? 

Desdemona. 
Nobody  ;  I  myself.     Farewell : 
Commend  me  to  my  kind  lord :  O,  farewell !     [Dies.] 

Othello. 
Why,  how  should  she  be  murdered?  etc. 

Compare  with  this  the  death  scene  of  the  strangled 
Duchess  of  Malfi.  Bosola,  at  whose  bidding  the  mur- 
der has  been  done,  is  left  alone  with  her  body;  and 
here  is  what  ensues : 

Bosola. 
What  would  I  do,  were  this  to  do  again? 
I  would  not  change  my  peace  of  conscience 
For  all  the  wealth  of  Europe.     She  stirs  ;  here's  life : 
Return,  fair  soul  from  darkness,  and  lead  mine 
Out  of  this  nimble  hell :  she's  warm,  she  breathes  : 
Upon  thy  pale  Ups  I  will  melt  my  heart, 
To  store  them  with  fresh  colour.     Who's  there? 
Some  cordial  drink  !    Alas  !  I  dare  not  call : 
So  pity  would  destroy  pity.     Her  eye  opes. 
And  heaven  in  it  seems  to  ope,  that  late  was  shut, 
To  take  me  up  to  mercy. 


90        THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

Duchess. 
Antonio ! 

Bosola. 

Yes,  madam,  he  is  living  ; 

The  dead  bodies  you  saw  were  but  figur'd  statues. 

He's  reconciled  to  your  brother ;  the  Pope  hath  wrought 

The  atonement. 

Duchess. 
Mercy  !    [Dies.'\ 

Bosola. 

O,  she's  gone  again  !  there  the  cords  of  life  broke,  etc. 

The  likeness  is  too  close  to  be  accidental.  Webster 
tried  to  outdo  one  of  Shakspere's  most  daring  stage 
effects,  and  nearly  overstepped  the  line  which  divides 
the  sublime  from  the  ridiculous. 

But  his  imitations  are  sometimes  more  impressive. 
In  Ben  Jonson's  "Cynthia's  Revels,"  for  example, 
there  is  a  prettily  fantastic  scene  in  which  Mercury 
awakens  Echo,  whose  responses  to  his  questions — re- 
peating their  final  syllables — make  very  pretty  plays 
on  words.  In  the  "Duchess  of  Malfi"  this  stage  effect 
is  deliberately  reproduced,  but  in  a  mood  of  fantastic 
horror  which  makes  Webster's  Echo — no  longer  em- 
bodied but  literal — faintly  foreshadow  the  fantasy  of 
Poe's  "Raven."  Again,  the  way  in  which  Webster 
exhausts  the  resources  of  combined  grotesqueness  and 
horror  which  reside  in  the  old  stage  convention  of 
madness,  is  reminiscent  not  only  of  Kyd  and  of  Mid- 
dleton,  but  of  Shakspere  himself  once  more.  When 
you  compare  the  "Duchess  of  Malfi"  with  Kyd's 
"Spanish    Tragedy"    or    with    Middleton's    "Change- 


THE    DRAMA  91 

ling,"  it  seems  a  work  of  genius.  When  you  compare 
it  with  "Hamlet"  or  "Lear,"  you  feel  how  that  genius 
was  subdued  by  its  sense  of  the  greater  genius  in 
whose  light  it  prayed  to  be  read. 

In  Webster's  very  style,  too,  a  similar  inhibitory 
sense  of  his  task  appears.  Undoubtedly  he  had  ex- 
traordinary narrative  power ;  but  none  of  his  narrative 
passages  quite  fit  their  context — as  Menenius  Agrip- 
pa's  fable  of  the  Belly  does,  for  example,  in  "Corio- 
lanus."  Webster  had  rare  power  of  aphorism,  too, 
but  his  aphorisms  seem  more  like  those  of  a  formal 
book  of  proverbs  than  like  the  consecutive  utterances 
of  human  beings.  He  had,  as  well,  an  unusual  faculty 
for  illustrative  comparisons  drawn  straight  from  Nat- 
ure; yet  these,  too,  stand  by  themselves.  They  are 
as  far  from  the  exuberant  ingenuity  of  Lily  as  they 
are  from  the  calm  finality  of  Dante. 

And  when  we  come  to  the  form  of  his  verse,  we 
find  this  broken  beyond  all  precedent  before.  You 
will  have  felt  this  in  the  contrast  between  the  rhythm 
of  "Othello"  and  that  of  the  "Duchess  of  Malfi." 
But  go  a  little  further;  take  two  of  Marlowe's  more 
familiar  lines : 

O  thou  art  fairer  than  the  evening  air, 
Clad  in  the  beauty  of  a  thousand  stars! 

Here  you  have  the  blank-verse  of  our  drama  in  its 
first  freshness.  Take  the  first  phrase  which  comes  to 
mind  from  Shakspere's  maturity: 


92         THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

She  looks  like  sleep, 
As  she  would  catch  another  Antony 
In  her  strong  toil  of  grace. 

Here  you  have  dramatic  blank-verse  at  its  acme.  Now 
compare  with  these  Webster's  most  familiar  line — 
that  which  Ferdinand  utters  as  he  looks  down  at  the 
sister  he  has  had  murdered : 

Cover  her  face.    Mine  eyes  dazzle.    She  died  young. 

That  line  is  marvellous  in  its  truth — its  insight.  But 
every  quiver  of  the  old  music  is  silent,  which  once 
held  verse  above  the  level  of  life.  The  rhythm  is  that 
of  a  poet  who  cannot  escape  consciousness  that  his 
personages  are  human  beings,  who  should  speak  in 
the  language  not  of  convention  but  of  mankind.  One 
may  almost  say  that  Webster's  style  seems  instantly 
poetical  only  in  his  infrequent  lyric  passages :  the  so- 
called  ''Land  Dirge,"  for  example: 

Call  for  the  robin  redbreast  and  the  wren, 

Since  o'er  shady  graves  they  hover, 

And  with  leaves  and  flowers  do  cover 

The  friendless  bodies  of  unburied  men. 

Call  unto  his  funeral  dole 

The  ant,  the  field-mouse,  and  the  mole. 

To  rear  him  hillocks  that  shall  keep  him  warm, 

And  (when  gay  tombs  are  robb'd)  sustain  no  harm. 

But  keep  the  wolf  far  thence,  that's  foe  to  men, 

For  with  his  nails  he'll  dig  them  up  again. 

Whatever  they  lost,  the  old  playwrights,  to  the  end, 
could  still  be  lyric  when  they  would. 


THE    DRAMA  93 

So  Webster,  too,  proves  more  tragic  in  a  way, 
than  the  laborious  and  wonderful  tragedies  which, 
amid  all  his  inhibitory  consciousness  of  fact,  his 
power  of  imagination  was  still  able  to  block  out. 
For  the  limits  which  were  so  fast  closing  about  him 
were  such  as  we  can  now  see,  in  the  perspective  of 
three  hundred  years,  to  have  meant  that  not  only  he, 
but  all  who  followed  him,  could  never  do  more  in 
their  own  art  than  follow  the  masters  by  whose  light 
they  would  be  sympathetically  read.  Marlowe  began 
English  tragedy,  we  may  say.  Kyd  and  Marston  care- 
lessly developed  it.  Shakspere  brought  it  to  its  acme. 
Tourneur  showed  the  beginning  of  its  wildly  rapid 
decline.  In  Webster  one  feels  its  expiring  and  de- 
spairing effort.     So  an  end. 

There  were  later  men,  of  course;  it  is  said  that  the 
"Duchess  of  Malfi"  was  acted  in  16 16 — the  year  when 
Shakspere  died,  when  Beaumont  died,  and  when  Ben 
Jonson  published  the  first  folio  volume  of  his  works. 
Jonson  himself  wrote  on;  so  did  Heywood,  and  Mid- 
dleton,  and  Fletcher,  and  more.  But  there  was  no 
new  note  in  any  of  their  work;  and  there  was  little 
new  in  the  work  of  the  three  still-remembered  drama- 
tists whose  whole  production  virtually  belongs  to  this 
later  period.    These  are  Ford,  Massinger,  and  Shirley. 

They  were  the  decadent  masters  of  a  great  school 
of  art,  we  must  remember ;  they  retained,  as  such  men 
always  must  retain,  trace  after  trace  of  its  greatness. 
You   can  find   such   qualities  throughout  the   history 


94         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

of  expression.  If  every  vestige  of  the  Parthenon 
frieze  had  crumbled  away,  we  might  still  feel  some- 
thing of  the  splendor  of  Greek  sculpture  from  such 
remnants  of  it  as  those  triumphal  figures  bearing  the 
spoils  of  Jerusalem  through  the  Arch  of  Titus.  Like 
the  Roman  sculptors,  too,  and  their  own  English  pre- 
decessors, the  latest  dramatists  followed  the  old  meth- 
ods to  the  end.  To  the  end,  accordingly,  these  old 
dramatists  were  not,  like  modern  artists,  creators, 
but  rather  they  were  frankly  translators  and  adapters. 
A  single  passage  from  Ford  may  perhaps  serve  ac- 
cordingly to  define  his  place  for  us.  In  the  last 
scene  of  "Love's  Sacrifice"  he  combines  the  catas- 
trophes of  "Much  Ado  About  Nothing,"  "Romeo  and 
Juliet,"  and  "Othello."  And  here  are  some  of  the 
lines  in  which  Fernando — for  the  instant  reproducing 
Romeo — rants  out  how  he  feels  his  poison  work : 

It  works,  it  works  already,  bravely  !  bravely ! 
Now,  now  I  feel  it  tear  each  several  joint. 
O  royal  poison  !  trusty  friend !  split,  split 
Both  heart  and  gall  asunder,  excellent  bane ! 

In  this  laborious  iteration,  anyone  can  instantly  feel 
the  touch  of  exhaustion.  This  is  not  the  old  mastery ; 
it  is  a  feeble  imitation  of  accepted  conventions,  fall- 
ing into  palpably  overwrought  rhetorical  device.  And 
mention  together  the  name  of  this  play — "Love's  Sac- 
rifice"— and  the  names  of  those  which  it  mimics — 
"Much  Ado  About  Nothing"  and  "Romeo  and  Juliet" 


THE    DRAMA  95 

and  "Othello."  Shakspere,  no  doubt,  imitated,  too; 
but  the  master  altered  Lily,  and  whomsoever  else  he 
imitated,  for  the  better,  lifting  mortality  into  immor- 
tality; Ford,  the  follower,  gently  lulled  the  master  to 
mortal  sleep.  Not  that  Ford  was  a  weakling;  only, 
where  Webster's  power  struggled,  with  some  trace 
of  the  old  titanic  strength,  against  the  new  traditions, 
Ford  was  of  such  later  time  as  must  perforce  submit. 
You  will  remember  those  passionate  lines  about  beauty 
in  Marlowe's  "Tamburlaine."  Put  beside  them  Ford's 
most  surely  lasting  words,  similar  in  purpose: 

Can  you  paint  a  thought?  or  number 
Every  fancy  in  a  slumber? 
Can  you  count  soft  minutes  roving 
From  a  dial's  point  by  moving? 
Can  you  grasp  a  sigh?  or  lastly 
Rob  a  virgin's  honour  chastely? 

No,  O,  no  !  yet  you  may 
Sooner  do  both  that  and  this, 
This  and  that,  and  never  miss, 
That  by  any  praise  display 
Beauty's  beauty     .     .     . 

The  contrast  shadows  the  whole  story — told  again,  if 
you  will,  in  a  comparison  of  how  chronicle-history 
awoke  in  Marlowe's  "Edward  II.,"  and  lived  in 
"Henry  IV.,"  and  sank  to  sleep  again  in  Ford's 
"Perkin  Warbeck." 

There  is  far  more  in  Ford  than  this,  else  he  would 
have  been  utterly  forgotten.     But  this — his  historical 


96         THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

position — is  what  concerns  ns  now.  So  there  is  far 
more  in  Massinger  than  his  morahzing,  painstaking 
rhetoric — the  very  laborious  evenness  of  which  stands 
in  such  sharp  contrast  to  the  excellent  flashes  of  poetry- 
sure  to  vivify  the  careless  conventions  and  the  cloudy 
rant  of  the  true  Elizabethans.  One  of  his  plays  has 
chanced  feebly  to  survive  on  the  stage.  With 
the  exception  of  Shakspere,  the  "New  Way  to  Pay 
Old  Debts"  is  the  only  relic  of  the  Elizabethan  drama 
which  I  ever  remember  on  the  bills.  In  some  degree, 
of  course,  this  is  because  the  part  of  Sir  Giles  Over- 
reach gives  such  an  admirable  opportunity  to  a  skilful 
"star."  Still  more,  I  think,  it  is  because  the  play  itself 
happens  to  retain  so  many  traces  of  the  stronger  stuff 
on  which  its  lighter  structure  is  built.  It  is  adapted 
from  Middleton's  "Trick  to  Catch  the  Old  One,"  a 
play  replete  with  careless,  indecent  life;  and  it  tells 
its  expurgated  story  with  much  vestige  of  the  humors 
which  Ben  Jonson's  understanding  labors  introduced 
on  our  stage  and  which  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  ro- 
manticized. Yet  compared  with  work  by  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  by  Jonson,  or  by  Middleton,  it  seems 
throughout  not  spontaneous  or  vital,  but  only  con- 
scientiously rhetorical.  And  as  for  Massinger's  verse, 
here  is  how  Sir  Giles  commends  a  suitor  to  his 
daughter : 

'Tis  an  honorable  man  ; 
A  lord.  Meg,  and  commands  a  regiment 
Of  soldiers,  and  what's  rare,  is  one  himself, 


THE    DRAMA  97 

A  bold  and  understanding  one :  and  to  be 
A  lord,  and  a  good  leader,  in  one  volume 
Is  granted  unto  few  but  such  as  rise  up 
The  kingdom's  glory. 

Superb  rhetoric  still,  but  no  more  like  our  older  dra- 
matic poetry  than  I  to  Hercules. 

The  last  of  the  old  dramatists  was  James  Shirley. 
Like  all  the  rest,  he  was  born  under  Queen  Elizabeth. 
Of  all  he  was  the  only  one  to  survive  until  the  Restora- 
tion; by  a  fitting  chance,  his  end  came  from  exposure 
during  that  London  fire  which,  when  he  was  seventy 
years  old,  swept  out  of  existence  the  city  for  whose 
denizens  the  playwrights  had  made  delight.  This  last 
of  them  died  with  Gothic  St.  Paul's,  and  the  Eliza- 
bethan capital  which  had  festered  about  it.  And  as  to 
Shirley's  work,  I  know  of  nothing  more  significant  than 
what  James  Russell  Lowell  somewhere  tells.  He  loved 
our  old  dramatic  poets,  and  read  them  deeply.  One  day 
his  eye  lighted  on  a  set  of  Shirley,  which  had  long 
been  on  his  shelves.  He  could  not  recall  that  he  had 
ever  read  a  line  of  it.  He  took  a  volume  down,  pre- 
pared for  a  new  pleasure;  and  there,  on  page  after 
page,  he  found  what  he  later  found  in  the  other  vol- 
umes, too — pencilled  notes  in  his  own  handwriting. 
Years  before  he  had  annotated  the  whole  set,  and  in 
them  all  he  had  found  nothing  to  abide  in  that  won- 
derful literary  memory  of  his,  who  more  than  any  other 
American  of  his  time  searched  all  things,  and  held  fast 
that  which  is  good.     Shirley  wrote  copiously,  in  al- 


98         THE   SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

most  every  manner  practised  by  the  Elizabethan  play- 
wrights ;  he  did  nothing  very  ill ;  but  he  did  nothing  so 
well  as  to  stamp  on  it  any  individuality  of  his  own.  He 
is  a  fact,  accordingly,  not  in  literature,  but  in  literary 
history — marking,  as  none  had  marked  before  him, 
how  completely  the  life  was  gone  from  that  complete 
school  of  literature  which,  in  1600,  had  seemed  in- 
exhaustibly vital. 

When  the  Puritan  Gosson,  in  1579,  published  his 
"School  of  Abuse,"  attacking  all  fine  art,  there  was 
no  real  need  of  Sidney's  "Defence  of  Poesie"  to  sustain 
the  superb  Elizabethan  integrity  which  w^as  so  soon 
to  raise  the  English  stage  above  all  others  but  the 
Greek.  When  Shakspere,  in  1600,  published — or  more 
probably  saw  published  by  piratical  booksellers — more 
of  his  plays  than  in  any  year  before,  this  integrity  of 
national  expression  seemed  still  unbroken.  When,  in 
1633,  the  Puritan  Prynne  made  his  more  famous  at- 
tack —  "Histriomastix"  —  the  giants  were  dead  or 
dying,  each  by  himself;  and  the  stage  had  truly  sunk 
into  a  deadness  which  makes  the  closing  of  the  thea- 
tres, nine  years  later,  seem  like  the  sealing  of  some 
noisome  tomb. 

It  is  needless  to  dwell  longer  on  this  phase  or  that 
of  the  swift  decline;  on  the  increasing  monstrosity  of 
tragic  motives,  or  the  constantly  more  conscious  ob- 
scenities of  comedy ;  on  the  exhaustion  which  led  to 
all  manner  of  excess;  on  the  way  in  which  humorous 
exaggeration  suppressed  truth  of  character  and  blind- 


THE    DRAMA  99 

ed  insight ;  on  the  benumbing  consciousness  of  the 
new  traditions  which  finally  made  the  romantic  drama 
as  servile  to  convention  as  ever  was  the  pseudo-classic ; 
on  the  sinking  of  blank-verse  into  a  rhetoric  which 
no  ear  can  distinguish  from  prose.  The  story  which 
all  these  symptoms  tell  is  the  same.  In  1600,  English 
audiences  were  national;  the  scenes  and  the  words 
which  appealed  to  them  expressed  the  integral  spirit 
of  the  pristine  Elizabethan  world.  In  1642,  English 
audiences  were  only  a  class  by  themselves — fastidi- 
ously cultivated,  perhaps,  both  in  the  graces  and  in 
the  vices  of  acknowledged  fashion,  but  with  hardly 
a  trace  left  of  that  eager  strenuousness  which  had  ani- 
mated the  robust  integrity  of  the  elder  time. 

It  is  needless,  either,  to  dwell  on  the  forms  of 
drama  which  retained  most  life — the  most  elaborately 
artificial,  the  Masques  which  afforded  the  court  such 
delight  as  later  times  have  specialized  into  the  opera 
and  the  ballet;  or  on  the  one  spark  of  lasting  vitality 
which  survived.  For  even  Shirley  had  lyric  power 
still.    Witness  such  a  stanza  as  this : 

The  glories  of  our  blood  and  state 

Are  shadows,  not  substantial  things; 

There  is  no  armour  against  fate; 

Death  lays  his  icy  hand  on  kings: 

Sceptre  and  crown 

Must  tumble  down, 

And  in  the  dust  be  equal  made 

With  the  poor  crooked  scythe  and  spade. 


loo   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

For  us  it  is  enough,  just  now,  to  recall  that  when 
we  tried  to  symbolize  the  mood  of  Elizabethan  litera- 
ture, we  fell  to  remembering  the  Pillars  of  Hercules, 
and  how  the  old  voyagers  passed  together  through 
these  limits,  eager  to  explore  the  unknown  seas  be- 
yond. If  we  recur  to  that  image,  and  fancy  ourselves 
to  have  been  of  the  fleet,  voyaging  in  that  bark  which 
was  laden  with  the  riches  of  the  drama,  we  may  fancy, 
as  we  remember  the  course  of  it,  which  we  have  so 
hastily  traced,  that  some  current  swept  us  uncontrol- 
lably away  from  all  our  convoy.  And  so  at  last — 
with  a  swiftness  which  should  make  us  reel — our  first 
tragic  discovery  is  the  sinking  beneath  our  feet  of 
the  craft 

Which  once  we  deemed  the  vessel  of  our  hopes 
Upon  the  seas  of  the  future. 


IV 

THE  DIVERGENT  MASTERS  OF  LYRIC  POETRY 

We  have  tried  to  render  ourselves  some  broad  ac- 
count of  how  integrally  the  spontaneous,  enthusiastic, 
and  versatile  national  temper  of  England  displayed 
itself  in  literature  when  the  seventeenth  century  be- 
gan. And  in  tracing  the  course  of  the  drama  from 
its  luxuriant  life  in  1600  to  its  extinction  at  the  close 
of  the  theatres  in  1642,  we  have  seen  how  the  most 
admirable  phase  of  that  integral  Elizabethan  literature 
disintegrated  and  declined.  Our  next  effort  will  be 
to  follow  the  course  of  other  English  poetry  the  while. 

Instead  of  other  poetry  I  had  almost  said  lyric. 
The  very  hesitation  which  made  me  substitute  that 
colorless  little  word  deserves  a  moment's  attention. 
In  such  considerations  as  ours,  we  are  forced  to  sim- 
plify fact;  if,  in  contemplating  any  aspect  of  our  sub- 
ject, we  can  clearly  discern  some  characteristic  feature 
by  which  it  may  surely  be  distinguished  from  its  sur- 
roundings, we  must  rest  for  the  moment  content. 
Thus,  in  touching  on  one  or  another  of  the  great  men 
who  composed  that  great  school  of  drama  from  which 
Shakspere  sprung — great  the  least  of  them,  however 


I02   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

far  he  may  have  lingered  below  the  standard  of  the 
greatest, — we  did  not  scruple  to  neglect  innumerable 
features  of  him.  All  we  attempted  was  to  perceive 
his  relation,  on  the  whole,  to  his  fellows.  And  some- 
thing like  this  is  all  we  can  attempt  now,  when  we 
turn  to  the  makers  of  those  other,  less  instantly  popu- 
lar phases  of  poetry  which  equally  altered  with  the 
century  we  are  contemplating  together.  So,  far 
as  I  should  have  been  from  comprehensively  right,  I 
should  not  have  been  all  wrong  if  I  had  said  at  once 
that  we  were  now  to  deal  with  lyric  poetry,  as  distin- 
guished from  dramatic.  For  very  surely,  whatever 
form,  other  than  dramatic,  English  poetry  took  during 
the  last  years  of  the  sixteenth  century  and  during  the 
half-century  which  followed,  the  grace  which  has  kept 
it  alive  is  its  lyric  quality.  Epic  in  purpose,  one  poet 
may  have  been,  no  doubt;  another,  didactic;  a  third, 
satirical;  but  whoever  among  them  is  remembered  or 
read  to-day  is  remembered,  not  for  these  several  pur- 
poses, but  for  the  lyric  beauties  which  grew  first  with 
something  like  the  natural  luxuriance  of  wild  flowers, 
and  later  with  a  luxuriance  more  like  that  which  de- 
lights us  in  lovingly  tended  gardens. 

If  I  were  asked,  indeed,  to  cite  verses  which  my 
memory  has  unconsciously  selected  as  typical  of  Eng- 
lish poetry  about  1600,  I  should  hardly  hesitate  to 
repeat  a  little  song  from  Campion's  "Book  of  Airs" 
which  has  lingered  with  me  hauntingly  ever  since  I 
first  read  it: 


POETRY  103 

When  thou  must  home  to  shades  of  underground, 

And  there  arrived,  a  new  admired  guest 
The  beauteous  spirits  do  engirt  thee  round, 

White  lope,  blithe  Helen,  and  the  rest. 
To  hear  the  stories  of  thy  finished  love. 
From  that  smooth  tongue  vi^hose  music  hell  can  move; 

Then  wilt  thou  speak  of  banqueting  delights. 

Of  masques  and  revels  which  sweet  youth  did  make, 

Of  tourneys  and  great  challenges  of  knights, 
And  all  those  triumphs  for  thy  beauty's  sake: 

When  thou  hast  told  these  honors  done  to  thee, 

Then  tell,  O  tell,  how  thou  didst  murder  me. 

Though  this  lack  the  enthusiastic  spontaneity — the 
full  experimental  youthfulness — of  those  elder  lyrics 
which  we  hastily  summarized  when  we  touched  on  the 
first  outburst  of  Elizabethan  song,  it  has  at  once  the 
felicity  of  a  momentary  mastery  still  unfettered  by 
consciousness  of  limitation,  and  a  wonderful  lyric 
purity.  Campion  was  as  much  a  musician  as  a  poet, 
but  he  lived  and  wrote  his  airs  at  a  time  when  his 
art  of  music  was  so  far  from  its  later,  overweening 
development  that  whoever  made  words  for  singing 
made  the  words  themselves  sing. 

All  the  while  I  should  have  known  that  this  was 
far  from  the  whole  story,  just  as  I  knew  how  much 
we  neglected  when  we  first  tried  to  summarize  our 
impression  of  Elizabethan  poetry.  The  chief  feature 
of  this  poetry  still  seems  to  me  its  buoyant  integrity 
of  enthusiastic  experiment.    First  struggling  with  the 


I04   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

difficulties  of  a  language  not  yet  tamed  to  the  service 
of  fine  art,  then  swiftly  finding  themselves  masters  of 
it,  the  poets — I  had  almost  said  the  Englishmen — who 
breathed  the  air  of  the  spacious  elder  days  surged  with 
tl>e  dramatists  through  the  straits  which  had  fixed  the 
limits  of  the  old  world,  daringly  and  joyously  ready 
to  explore  the  mysteries  beyond.  But  already,  when 
the  seventeenth  century  began,  there  were  many  signs 
which  told  how  the  little  fleet  must  scatter — tokens 
of  the  disintegration  to  come. 

On  Spenser,  in  his  lofty  isolation  from  the  rest,  we 
dwelt  a  little  at  first;  and  our  purpose  then  was  such 
that  we  w^ere  warranted  in  thinking  of  him  almost  as 
if  he  had  been  solitary.  But  this  was  no  more  the 
case  with  him  than  with  Shakspere.  The  first  three 
books  of  the  "Faerie  Oueene"  were  published  in  1590. 
Before  Spenser's  death,  nine  years  later,  various  other 
men  had  published  poems  which  began  to  indicate  di- 
vergent tendencies,  each  of  which  might  well  deserve 
careful  study.  Daniel,  and  a  very  little  later  Drayton, 
had  begun  their  copious  careers.  They  had  not  only 
added  their  parts  to  the  growing  list  of  sonnet-se- 
quences which  was  so  swiftly  developing  the  excellent 
experiments  of  Sidney  into  the  permanence  of  Shak- 
spere; they  had  also  produced  their  first  examples  of 
that  patriotic  narrative  poetry  which — although  it 
contained  the  germs  of  greatness — never  quite  reached 
the  height  of  true  epic  nor  yet  such  development  as 
that   of    its    dramatic    brother,    the    chronicle-history. 


POETRY  105 

Yet,  in  Drayton's  hands,  it  later  achieved  one  master- 
piece. There  is  hardly  anything  in  our  language  to 
surpass  his  stirring  "Ballad  of  Agincourt,"  which 
begins : 

Fair  stood  the  wind  for  France, 

When  we  our  sails  advance, 

Nor  now  to  prove  our  chance 
Longer  will  tarry; 

But  putting  to  the  main, 

At  Caux,  the  mouth  of  Seine, 

Witli  all  his  martial  train. 
Landed  King  Harry. 

Campbell  tried  that  kind  of  thing,  and  so  did  Tenny- 
son; both  admirably.  But  read  their  verses  by  the 
side  of  Drayton's — himself  a  man  of  less  gift  than 
either — and  you  will  know,  even  though  you  cannot 
tell,  how  none  but  Elizabethans  could  quite  match  the 
quality  of  the  elder  note. 

Southwell,  meantime,  hanged  for  a  Jesuit  at  Ty- 
burn, had  left  us  his  little  treasury  of  inystic  fantasies, 
preserving  record  of  the  gentle  and  adoring  ecstasies 
which  inspired  and  consoled  through  persecution  the 
spirit  of  English  Catholicism.  Beautiful  purity  of 
heart  they  bespeak ;  Southwell  was  one  who  need  never 
have  feared  but  he  should  see  God.  Yet  there  are 
moods  in  which  one  questions  whether  this  quality  is, 
in  truth,  his  most  noteworthy ;  for  the  images  in  which 
he  clothes  his  ingenuous  purity  seem  now  and  again, 
for  all  their  sweetness,  somewhat  trivial  in  their  con- 


io6   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

scions  ingenuity.  Such  conscious  ingenuity,  without 
the  balance  of  fervor  and  of  ecstasy,  pervades  the  un- 
mitigated fantasies  of  Sir  John  Davies — with  his 
"Orchestra,"  his  "Nosce  Teipsum,"  and  his  "Hymns 
of  Astrsea."  These  last  are  perhaps  most  typical. 
All  are  anagrams.  The  initial  letters  of  the  sixteen 
lines  composing  everyone  spell  the  royal  name  Eliza- 
BETHA  Regina.  Yet  the  cramping  necessity  of  be- 
ginning lines  with  the  letters  B  E  T  H  A  did  not  pre- 
vent Davies  from  making  stanzas  so  freely  lyric  as 

this: 

But,  Nightingale,  sith  you  delight 
Ever  to  watch  the  starry  night; 
Tell  all  the  stars  of  heaven, 
Heaven  never  had  a  star  so  bright 
As  now  to  earth  is  given  ; 

namely,  her  maiden  majesty,  then  sixty-six  years  of 
age. 

At  about  the  same  time  the  satires  of  Hall  and  of 
Marston — far  from  immortal,  to  be  sure — carried 
perceptibly  forward  a  kind  of  poetry  which  has  al- 
ways seemed  exotic  in  our  language,  because  its  real 
effort  is  to  express  the  facts  of  modern  experience 
in  the  terms  of  decadent  Rome.  And  in  the  same 
years  the  full  and  heightened  style  of  Chapman  had 
begun  to  enrich  English  with  that  version  of  Homer 
which  remains  precious.  Not  the  least  wonder  of  the 
lines  in  which  Keats  recorded  his  first  knowledge  of 
it  is  the  precision  with  which  they  express  the  spirit, 


POETRY  107 

not  of  Greece,  but  of  the  closing  sixteenth  century 
when  EHzabeth  reigned,  and  Chapman  wrote,  and 
there  were  still  worlds  to  conquer : 

Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken; 

Or  like  stout  Cortez,  when,  with  eagle  eyes, 
He  stared  at  the  Pacific;  and  all  his  men 

Looked  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise. 
Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien. 

When  Spenser  first  sent  forth  the  "Faerie  Queene," 
not  one  of  these  contemporary  poets  had  begun  to 
publish.  When  he  died,  in  1599,  there  were  other 
names,  too,  lesser  than  his  but  still  distinct.  We  have 
touched  on  Daniel  and  Drayton,  on  Southwell  and 
Davies,  on  Hall  and  Marston,  on  Chapman,  only  to 
remind  ourselves  of  a  truth  which,  when  we  first  gen- 
eralized our  impression  of  Elizabethan  poetry,  was  not 
quite  so  salient  but  that  we  might  neglect  it.  That 
poetry  was  truly  integral  in  all  its  spontaneous  and 
versatile  experimental  enthusiasm.  At  the  same  time, 
each  new  poet  was  beginning  to  grow  more  individual, 
more  distinctly  separate  from  the  rest.  As  you  know 
them  better,  you  begin  to  feel  how  swiftly  the  time 
was  approaching  when  each  man  should  have  his  own 
office.  And  thus  considering  and  comparing  them, 
you  grow  in  the  first  place  to  feel  more  and  more 
assured  that,  apart  from  the  dramatists,  Spenser  alone 
attained   lasting  eminence;   but  that  meanwhile  two 


io8   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

slightly  later  men  were  emerging  with  more  distinct- 
ness than  the  rest.  One  of  these  is  Ben  Jonson — 
more  nearly  excellent  as  a  poet  than  he  was  as  a 
dramatist;  the  other,  who  wrote  his  poems  at  this 
time,  though  few  seem  to  have  been  published  till 
much  later,  is  Donne.  Before  proceeding  to  what 
followed,  we  may  best  pause  to  consider  these  three 
dissimilar  masters. 

In  1600,  of  course,  Spenser  was  lately  dead.  Yet 
that  very  word  seems  inapt;  for  Spenser,  the  poet,  is 
of  those  few  who  will  never  die.  He  had  crowned 
the  experiments  of  his  early  days  with  an  achieve- 
ment in  its  own  way  unsurpassed.  No  doubt  his 
stanza  is  of  foreign  origin,  suggested  by  his  delight 
in  the  poetry  of  Renascent  Italy;  but  there  can  be  no 
doubt,  either,  that  in  adapting  this  to  English  use  he 
made  it  idiomatic.  Spenser's  verse,  too,  is  idiomatic 
in  spite  of  those  deliberate,  experimental  archaisms 
and  oddities  of  language  which  make  his  dialect  un- 
like anything  ever  actually  spoken.  He  had  made  this 
English,  at  last,  an  immortal  instrument  of  beauty. 
On  this  aspect  of  his  career  we  dwelt  perhaps  distract- 
ingly  when  we  considered  his  relation  to  his  prede- 
cessors. 

Yet  mere  form  never  made  poetry  live.  Obscure, 
or  at  least  bewildering,  though  Spenser  be,  when  we 
strive  to  find  our  way  through  the  fantasies  he  made 
alive  with  beauty,  there  can  be  no  question  that  these 
very  fantasies  reveal  a  personality  in  the  poet.     Such 


POETRY  109 

impressions  as  those  on  which  our  conception  of  his 
personahty  are  based  are  ekisively  hard  to  summarize ; 
yet  we  must  attempt  some  summary  of  them  if  we 
would  definitely  account  for  that  lasting  influence  which 
began  in  Spenser's  own  time  and  has  never  quite 
lapsed.  What  makes  him  still  the  Poet's  Poet  is  not 
only  his  beauty;  it  is  partly  the  character  which  this 
beauty  embodies.  Gentle  of  heart  he  was;  courteous; 
at  once  sensuous  and  unfleshly;  and  sincere  in  his 
purpose  to  make  his  utterances  edifying.  With  this 
temper  he  faced  the  facts  of  his  Elizabethan  world. 
The  deeds  of  men,  in  their  actuality,  were  often  base 
and  ugly;  the  art  of  literature,  which  he  was  destined 
to  master,  was  still  in  the  making;  and  everywhere 
about  him,  in  those  days  of  enthusiastic  experiment, 
affectation  and  merit  were  bewilderingly  confused. 
As  comments  on  life,  accordingly,  his  poems  are 
archaically,  deliberately,  almost  painfully  artificial ; 
his  substance,  whatever  its  ultimate  veracity,  is  never 
simple,  never  spontaneous  or  inevitable  in  conception. 
Yet,  beneath  it  all,  you  feel  the  spirit  of  one  who 
would  work  for  righteousness;  who  feels,  with  a  gen- 
tleness all  his  own,  that  each  man  should  strive  in  this 
world  to  make  his  life  better,  and  more  holy.  Now 
this  spirit,  despite  the  sensuous  beauty  of  its  guise, 
is  at  heart  that  of  the  same  English  Reformation  from 
which  later  sprang  the  nobler  features  of  dominant 
Puritanism.  Those  are  not  all  mistaken  who  find  in 
Spenser  deeper  and  deeper  trace  of  what  was  deepest 


no       THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

in  the  spiritual  life  of  his  time.  Puritan  or  not,  it 
was  with  rare  purity  of  spirit  that  he  made  those 
melodious  stanzas.  Yet,  throughout  them  his  unceas- 
ing amenity  as  an  artist,  his  sensuous  delight  in  beauty 
both  of  fancy  and  of  phrase,  embodied  the  nobler  tem- 
per of  the  pagan  Renaissance,  too — that  temper  which 
loved  beauty  just  for  beauty's  sake.  Thus  combining 
something  of  the  purer  spirit  of  the  Renaissance  with 
something  of  the  purer  spirit  of  the  Reformation,  he 
became,  and  has  remained,  a  gentle  guide  to  men  who 
seek  in  either  spirit,  or  in  both,  helpful  solution  of 
eternal  mystery. 

From  the  beginning,  accordingly,  Spenser  was  des- 
tined to  be  not  only  a  historical  fact,  but  an  influence; 
an  influence,  however,  rather  formal  than  substantial, 
for  the  reason  that  while  his  form  was  often  excellent, 
his  grasp  of  substance  never  had  the  firmness  of  sim- 
plicity. His  very  form,  the  while,  had  its  palpable 
affectations,  particularly  in  his  deliberate  archaisms 
and  other  oddities  of  phrase;  it  had  its  extreme  man- 
nerisms, as  well,  such  as  his  easily  parodied  excess 
of  alliteration.  And  his  followers  imitated  rather  his 
peculiarities  than  his  poetry.  Of  these  later.  What 
we  have  already  remarked  will  go  far  to  explain  some 
careless  comments  on  him  by  the  most  influential  poet 
of  immediately  succeeding  years. 

Among  those  tart  notes  of  Ben  Jonson's  talk  which 
Drummond  made,  some  twenty  years  after  Spenser 
died,  are  two  or  three  remarks  about  Spenser.     Here 


POETRY  III 

is  the  first :  "Spenser's  stanzaes  pleased  him  not, 
nor  his  matter;  the  meaning  of  which  Allegorie  he 
had  dehvered  in  papers  to  Sir  Walter  Raughlie." 
The  classical  doctrine  of  Jonson,  you  see,  had  little 
patience  with  the  Italianate  graces  which,  by  that 
time,  Spenser's  imitators  had  developed  into  newly 
conventional  affectations;  nor  yet  could  Jonson  pa- 
tiently submit  to  the  obstacles  which  Spenser's  alle- 
gory laboriously  interposed  between  readers  and  mean- 
ing. For  all  that,  as  Drummond  records  a  little  later, 
Ben  Jonson  had  "by  heart  some  verses  of  Spenser's 
Calender  about  wyne."  If  these  verses  have  been 
rightly  identified,  they  show  Jonson  loyal  to  himself; 
for  they  are  almost  the  least  Spenserian  in  Spenser : 

Who  ever  casts  to  compasse  weightye  prise, 
And  thinkes  to  throw  out  thondring  words  of  threate, 
Let  powre  in  lavish  cups  and  thriftie  bitts  of  meate, 
For  Bacchus  fruite  is  frend  to  Phoebus  wise; 
And  when  with  wine  the  braine  begins  to  sweate 
The  nombers  flowe  as  fast  as  spring  doth  ryse. 

Years  later,  in  the  "Discoveries,"  Jonson  touched 
on  Spenser  more  deliberately.  His  objection  to  Spen- 
ser's manner  remained  unshaken,  but  he  admitted  the 
graces  of  Spenser's  spirit.  "Spenser,"  he  wrote,  "af- 
fecting the  ancients,  writ  no  language;  yet  I  would 
have  him  read  for  his  matter,  but  as  Virgil  read 
Ennius."  Jonson  seems  to  have  stayed  deaf  to  Spen- 
ser's melody,  and  true  to  his  own  hatred  of  affecta- 


112   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

tion — of  any  "humour" ;  true,  as  well,  to  that  love  for 
purity  of  dialect  which  made  him  such  a  master  of  ver- 
nacular English.  But  he  could  feel,  at  last,  the  beauty 
of  Spenser's  spirit;  and  feel,  too,  what  a  treasure  of 
elder  tradition  the  Poet's  Poet  had  gathered  within 
the  compass  of  his  verse. 

I  have  cited  these  opinions  of  Jonson  not  because 
of  their  validity  but  because  of  the  light  they  throw 
on  the  aspect  in  which  the  most  memorable  effect  of 
Italian  influence  on  Elizabethan  poetry  presented  itself 
to  the  poet  whose  own  work  embodies  the  most  ripe 
effect  on  that  poetry  of  orthodox  classical  learning. 
We  have  already  considered  Jonson  as  a  dramatist. 
Puzzling  we  found  him  among  his  contemporaries  of 
the  theatre.  Almost  everybody  else  followed  and 
adapted  the  romantic  conventions  of  the  native  Eng- 
lish stage.  Jonson,  on  the  other  hand,  maintained, 
with  characteristic  sturdiness,  as  much  as  he  could 
of  those  classical  principles  to  which  the  stages  of 
France  and  Italy  yielded.  His  plays,  nevertheless,  do 
not  seem  conventionally  pseudo-classic;  rather  they 
seem  at  first  completely,  though  oddly,  Elizabethan. 
This  apparent  peculiarity  we  finally  attributed  to  the 
fact  that  he  was  not  only  master  of  the  classical  con- 
ventions which  he  so  stoutly  maintained ;  he  was  also, 
beyond  almost  any  other  writer  of  his  day,  a  master 
of  vernacular  English.  So  he  set  forth  his  purposes 
not  in  pedantically  conventional  dialect,  shunning 
"common  and  plebeian  forms  of  speech,"  but  in  the 


POETRY  113 

vitally  human  terms  which  men  actually  used  in  deal- 
ing with  one  another.  For  purity  of  phrase,  indeed, 
there  are  few  English  authors  whose  vocabulary,  to 
this  day,  proves  more  trusty.  If  you  find  that  Ben 
Jonson  used  a  word,  you  may  use  it  fearlessly  still. 
His  classicism,  in  the  drama,  was  a  matter  rather  of 
spirit  than  of  language.  At  least,  it  never  led  him 
into  phrases  whose  mere  form  betrayed  it. 

In  his  dramas,  no  doubt,  this  somewhat  paradoxical 
combination  of  classical  spirit  with  vernacular  style 
failed  to  produce  a  lastingly  happy  result.  In  the 
lyric  poems  on  which  we  touch  to-day,  the  result  was 
quite  the  reverse.  Jonson's  lyrics  are  not  only  scat- 
tered through  his  plays  and  his  masques.  He  wrote 
and  collected  a  great  many  separate  ones,  very  various 
in  kind,  in  purpose,  in  merit;  and  more  have  been 
collected  since  his  time.  Throughout,  these  have  just 
the  characteristics  which  we  found  in  his  dramas.  He 
was  always  animated  by  a  belief,  based  on  vitally 
sympathetic  reading  of  the  classics,  that  any  given 
literary  purpose  should  fall  into  some  given  form — 
that  there  was  one  single  right  way,  as  distinguished 
from  all  other  ways,  of  expressing  every  single  thing. 
Sometimes  laboriously,  sometimes  more  easily,  he 
accordingly  tried  to  make  verses  as  they  ought 
to  be  made  with  unfailing  artistic  conscience.  And 
among  the  precepts  which  this  conscience  seems  to 
have  kept  before  him,  two  were  constant.  It  was  his 
business,  he  felt  with  the  best  classic  of  them  all,  to 


114   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

be  lucid;  you  shall  search  his  volumes  in  vain  for  a 
line  which  shall  really  puzzle  you.  It  was  his  duty, 
as  well,  when  he  wrote  English  to  write  that  language 
and  no  other;  you  will  be  at  pains  to  find  in  him  any- 
where an  unintentional  departure  from  idiom.  There 
are  few  styles  anywhere  more  free  than  his  from  verbal 
ingenuity,  from  affectation  of  phrase.  The  humor 
which  possessed  him  as  a  poet  was  chiefly  composed  of 
devotion  to  sound  sense  and  pure  language. 

These  virtues  were  evident  even  in  his  plays.  But 
his  conscientious  effort  to  compose  plays  throughout 
with  orthodox  precision,  impeded  such  free  range  of 
imagination  as  often  makes  more  vital  the  work  of 
far  less  able  men.  And  meanwhile  the  unwitting 
pedantry  which  lurked  beneath  the  vernacular  surface 
of  his  dialogue  often  made  its  temper  puzzling. 
Again  and  again,  while  pretending,  with  full  self- 
iDclief,  to  set  forth  an  image  of  Renascent  English  life, 
he  was  really  expressing  the  moods — and  often  trans- 
lating the  very  words — of  satirists  who  lived  and  died 
despairing  amid  the  decadence  of  antiquity.  No  won- 
der those  labored  and  understanding  works  of  his, 
exotic  at  heart,  have  been  overgrown  by  the  wild 
luxuriance  of  the  native  dramatic  poetry  which  was 
springing  up  all  around  them. 

With  his  lyrics,  as  I  have  said,  the  case  is  different. 
When,  as  in  plays,  motives  are  complex,  the  conditions 
which  make  their  utterance  vital  are  apt  to  vary  with 
the  varying  conditions  of  their  historical  environment : 


POETRY  115 

forms  which  suit  one  state  of  society  often  puzzle 
or  bore  a  different  one.  When,  as  in  aphorisms  or 
in  lyric  verses,  motives  are  essentially  simple,  the 
forms  which  suit  them  are  apt  to  be,  like  funda- 
mental emotion,  unchanging.  The  very  impulse 
toward  form  which  deadened  Jonson's  plays  accord- 
ingly strengthened  his  lyric  poems;  and  since  these, 
like  his  plays,  were  always  rendered  in  an  English 
idiomatic  as  to  phrase,  to  rhythm,  and  to  metre,  you 
will  find  his  lyrics  again  and  again  on  the  verge  of 
perfection. 

None  of  them  is  more  characteristic  than  the  most 
familiar : 

Drink  to  me  only  with  thine  eyes, 

And  I  will  pledge  with  mine; 
Or  leave  a  kiss  but  in  the  cup, 

And  I'll  not  ask  for  wine. 
The  thirst,  that  from  the  soul  doth  rise, 

Doth  ask  a  drink  divine. 
But  might  I  of  Jove's  nectar  sup, 
I  would  not  change  for  thine. 

Both  this  stanza  and  the  other  are  almost  literally 
translated  from  scattered  passages  in  the  letters  of 
Philostratus.  That  immortally  English  opening  line, 
for  example,  is  simply  an  English  version  of  the 
Greek  phrase: 

"E/Aot  Se  fx6voL<;  irpoinve  rots  ofifiacriv. 

What  Jonson  has  done  is  to  compose  in  such  ex- 
quisite order  the  stray  sentences  which  he  culled  from 


ii6   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

the  prose  of  a  Greek  rhetorician,  and  to  phrase  them 
in  an  EngHsh  so  exquisitely  pure  that  we  need  effort 
to  feel  that  Jonson's  art  in  this  case  was  not  spon- 
taneous but  laboriously  understanding.  One  or  two 
less  familiar  examples  must  serve  to  show  on  the 
one  hand  his  deference  to  his  ancient  masters,  and 
on  the  other  hand  how  the  spirit  that  was  in  him 
expressed  itself  more  freely.  Among  his  epigrams 
is  one  addressed  to  the  Ghost  of  Martial : 

Martial,  thou  gav'st  far  nobler  epigrams 
To  thy  Domitian  than  I  can  my  James; 
But  in  my  royal  subject  I  pass  thee. 
Thou  flatter'dst  thine,  mine  cannot  flatter'd  be. 

Here,  no  doubt,  you  have  Jonson  at  his  laborious 
worst;  but  a  little  earlier  in  the  same  collection  come 
the  nearly  faultless  lines  he  wrote  in  memory  of  his 
little  child,  Mary: 

At  six  months'  end  she  parted  hence 

With  safety  of  her  innocence; 

Whose  soul  heaven's  Queen,  whose  name  she  bears, 

In  comfort  of  her  mother's  tears. 

Hath  placed  amongst  her  virgin  train; 

Where,  while  that,  severed,  doth  remain, 

This  grave  partakes  the  fleshly  birth; 

Which  cover  lightly,  gentle  earth! 

Already  we  have  enough  to  show  us  the  mood  and  the 
power  of  the  poet  who  could  sturdily  assert,  in  his  cups, 


POETRY  117 

that  Shakspere  wanted  art,  and  could  deliberately  set 
down  in  his  note-book  that  Spenser  writ  no  language. 
In  creative  power  he  never  approached  either;  but  in 
faithful  obedience  to  the  orthodox  mandates  of  his  ar- 
tistic conscience  he  accomplished  lyric  work  so  beautiful 
that  even  by  itself  it  could  have  established  and  main- 
tained authority.  And  this  authority,  whatever  else, 
would  have  kept  those  who  accepted  it  from  extrava- 
gance or  error.  If  no  daring  guide,  Jonson  would 
always  have  been  a  safe  one;  and  a  safe  guide  he 
proved.  His  leadership,  however,  was  not  all  due  to 
his  work ;  in  no  slight  degree  it  was  a  question  of  his 
personality  combined  with  the  circumstances  and  the 
length  of  his  career.  He  made  his  sturdy  way,  every- 
one knows,  from  obscurity,  through  the  theatres,  to 
the  laureateship  which  he  held  so  long.  Few  men 
of  his  time  had  wider  opportunity  for  acquaintance 
with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  from  the  vagrants 
of  London  streets  to  royalty  itself.  He  was  of  con- 
vivial habit,  too,  with  a  quick,  assertive  temper  of 
his  own;  eager  to  mingle  with  any  company,  to  cross 
swords  or  bludgeons  of  wit  with  whoever  would  meet 
him;  hastily  quarrelsome,  never  rancorous,  stoutly 
assertive;  ready,  as  the  old  phrase  goes,  with  a.  kiss 
or  a  blow.  When  he  was  reconciled  to  the  Church 
of  England  he  drained  the  communion-cup  to  prove 
his  sincerity.  And  so,  with  the  years,  he  gathered 
about  him  such  a  company  of  friends  and  of  disciples 
as  has  been  paralleled  in  the  records  of  English  litera- 


ii8   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

ture  only  by  that  which  gathered  about  his  great 
namesake  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

Like  any  influence  in  hterature  of  which  those  who 
feel  it  are  aware,  this  influence  of  Jonson's  personality 
and  of  his  work  tended  to  grow  formal.  What  made 
Jonson  great  was  the  abiding  and  pervasive  power 
of  his  artistic  conscience.  What  his  disciples  imitated 
was  rather  the  superficial  polish  of  his  lyric  achieve- 
ment. Of  his  disciples  we  shall  reason  later;  yet  one 
phase  of  Jonson's  influence,  not  so  evident  as  that  of 
his  lyric  masterpieces,  we  may  touch  on  now.  With 
him,  classicism  meant  only  the  expression  of  sound 
sense  in  pure  language.  One  is  hardly  apt,  accord- 
ingly, to  group  him  with  the  deliberate  pseudo-classic 
writers  of  later  times,  who  imposed  on  English  the 
bondage  of  the  heroic  couplet.  And  yet  you  can  find 
the  germs  of  their  spirit  in  his.  His  overwhelming 
vernacular  impulse  was  a  natural  result — I  had  almost 
said  a  phase — of  the  eager  experimentation  which  ani- 
mated all  true  Elizabethan  poetry.  As  the  early  days 
passed  from  life  into  tradition,  this  enthusiastic  im- 
pulse was  bound  to  flag.  And  so,  one  may  see,  the 
the  rigidity  of  form  which  did  not  finally  cramp  lit- 
erature until  long  after  they  had  buried  Jonson  up- 
right in  Westminster  Abbey,  was  after  all  the  normal 
outgrowth  of  his  artistic  conscience,  passed  from  vital- 
ity into  the  rigidity  of  formal  creed. 

As  a  man  of  letters,  and  a  scholar  too,  whose  princi- 
ples took   the  shape   of  doctrine,   Jonson   was   natu- 


POETRY  119 

rally  a  decided,  though  not  a  finally  trustworthy,  critic 
of  his  contemporaries.  He  read  omnivorously,  and 
digested  whatever  he  read,  at  least  enough  to  reduce 
the  results  of  his  reading  to  the  form  of  concrete  opin- 
ion. Expressed,  now  and  again,  in  his  published  works, 
these  comments  on  his  fellow  writers  appear  most 
characteristically  in  Drummond's  notes  of  his  casual 
talk.  He  touched  on  a  great  many  English  poets  of 
his  time,  but  on  none  other  so  often  as  on  the  most 
eccentric  of  all,  John  Donne.  Whether  this  emphasis 
came  of  Jonson's  own  motion  or  because  of  questions 
from  Drummond,  we  can  never  know;  but  some  of 
Jonson's  dicta  have  become  as  familiar  as  they  are 
emphatic. 

"He  esteemeth  John  Done,"  writes  Drummond, 
"the  first  poet  in  the  world  in  some  things;"  some 
of  Donne's  verses,  Drummond  adds,  Jonson  had  by 
heart;  and  he  concludes  by  noting  Jonson's  assertion 
that  Donne  wrote  "all  his  best  pieces  ere  he  was  twen- 
ty-five years  old" — that  is,  before  1598.  In  another 
note  is  set  down  Jonson's  famous  assertion  on  the 
other  side,  "That  Done,  for  not  keeping  of  accent, 
deserved  hanging."  Elsewhere  is  Jonson's  mistaken, 
though  defensible,  prophecy,  "That  Done,  .  .  .  for 
not  being  understood,  would  perish;"  elsewhere,  again, 
is  a  suggestion  that  this  fault  was  sometimes  sportive, 
for  "Done  said  to  him,  he  wrott  that  Epitaph  on 
Prince  Henry,  Look  to  me  Faith  to  match  Sir  Ed : 
Herbert   in  obscurenesse" — a   feat   which   he  accom- 


I20   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

plished.  Finally,  in  fact  though  not  in  place,  comes 
the  statement  that  Donne  "now,  since  he  was  made 
Doctor,  repenteth  highlie,  and  seeketh  to  destroy  all 
his  poems."  Incidentally,  Jonson  twice  alluded  to  his 
own  critical  comment  on  Horace's  "Art  of  Poetry," 
the  manuscript  of  which  was  accidentally  destroyed 
later;  this  took  the  form  of  a  dialogue,  in  which 
"by  Criticus,"  one  of  the  interlocutors,  "is  under- 
stood Done."  We  may  fairly  infer,  I  think,  that  the 
literary  doctrine  of  Donne  was  in  heretical  contra- 
diction to  the  robust  orthodoxy  of  Jonson;  and  that 
the  lost  dialogue  triumphantly  confuted  this  excess 
of  artistic  Protestantism. 

At  all  events,  though  many  of  Donne's  poems  were 
long  unpublished,  his  works  were  familiar  in  manu- 
script to  his  literary  contemporaries;  and,  whatever 
else,  they  were  recognized  as  the  most  individual  of 
his  time.  Spenser  frankly  set  forth  in  English  poetry 
the  influence  of  classical  Italian.  Jonson  sturdily  ex- 
pounded and  practised  the  permanent  poetic  principles 
of  the  enduring  classics  of  antiquity,  Donne  wrote 
with  utter  disregard  of  both  these  influences;  and, 
although  he  was  manifestly  influenced  by  the  decadent 
ingenuities  which  had  become  fashionable  in  Italy  and 
in  Spain,  his  English  manner  was,  almost  rudely,  his 
own. 

Walton's  first  published  biography  was  a  life  of 
Donne,  made  for  an  edition  of  his  sermons.  The 
emphasis  here  is  all  on  his  later  days  of  grave  divinity, 


POETRY  121 

but  enough  is  set  down  to  show  how  he  was  an  infant 
prodigy  of  precocity;  how  he  Hved  a  wild  youth,  which 
bore  fruit  in  much  poetic  utterance;  how  he  made 
a  romantically  imprudent  marriage;  how,  partly  as  a 
measure  of  worldly  wisdom,  he  took  orders;  how  he 
became  a  powerful  preacher,  and  was  made  Dean  of 
St.  Paul's ;  and  how,  during  his  last  illness,  he  fan- 
tastically had  himself  swathed  in  a  winding-sheet,  and 
stood,  with  closed  eyes,  for  that  grim  portraiture  of 
death  which  was  carved  in  marble  for  his  monument, 
which  survived  the  Great  Fire,  and  which  may  still 
be  seen  in  St.  Paul's,  among  the  few  relics  of  the 
Elizabethan  cathedral. 

The  Donne  with  whom  we  are  concerned  is  not  this 
grave  and  reverend  Doctor  of  Divinity,  who  sought 
in  his  later  years  to  destroy  his  poems.  The  Donne 
who  touches  us  is  the  poet,  whose  verses  have  been 
collected,  and  persist  in  spite  of  him.  To  us  they 
cannot  have  the  sort  of  surprising  quality  which,  in 
their  own  day,  attracted  instant  attention.  So  far  as 
I  can  discover,  their  approach  to  popularity  came  not 
so  much  from  their  aggressive  peculiarity  of  form  as 
from  the  fact  that,  in  contrast  to  the  literature  about 
them,  they  must  have  appeared  amazingly  veracious. 
Their  lack  of  conventional  grace,  when  other  men  were 
so  apt  to  be  conventionally  graceful,  makes  them  seem 
astonishingly  genuine :  they  seem  to  express  not  fancy, 
but  fact,  and  in  a  temper  very  like  that  of  the  art 
which  modern  cant  calls  realistic. 


122   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

In  their  own  day,  this  spirit  of  reaHsm  was  almost 
unprecedented;  yet  if  this  were  all  which  made  Donne 
memorable,  he  would  be  of  hardly  more  than  histor- 
ical interest.  And  his  fame,  whether  we  care  for  him 
or  not,  is  proving  permanent.  We  must  look  a  little 
closer;  facing  and  trying  to  penetrate  the  surface  of 
his  obscurity.  Sometimes,  as  in  that  epitaph  on 
Prince  Henry,  this  obscurity  was  mischievously  de- 
liberate : 

Look  to  me,  faith,  and  look  to  my  faith,  God; 
For  both  my  centres  feel  this  period. 
Of  weight  one  centre,  one  of  greatness  is; 
And  reason  is  that  centre,  faith  is  this. 

Yet  even  here  one  can  feel  the  man's  lasting  power. 
Thoughtful  to  the  degree  of  an  over-ingenuity  which 
here  he  frankly  parodies — Herbert,  and  Greville,  to 
name  no  more,  had  already  been  more  ingenious  still — 
he  always  manages  to  express  himself  also  with  a 
surgent,  yet  repressed,  emotional  power  which  makes 
him,  among  the  poets  of  his  time,  the  most  intense. 
His  obscurity  is  not  a  matter  of  language;  his  vocabu- 
lary is  almost  as  pure  as  Jonson's  own.  The  difficul- 
ties of  him  spring  rather  from  this  pervasive  intensity, 
which  strives,  deliberately  or  instinctively,  to  charge 
his  lines  with  a  heavier  burden  of  thought  and  feeling 
than  any  lines  could  unbendingly  carry.  Accordingly 
he  seems,  once  for  all,  to  disdain  the  oddities  into 
which  the  lines  distort  themselves  under  the  strain. 


POETRY  123 

You  can  feel  this  peculiarity  almost  everywhere. 
Among  his  earlier  poems  are  the  "Satires,"  in  every 
sense  the  least  palpably  conventional,  and  so  appar- 
ently the  most  genuine,  of  his  time  and  perhaps  of 
our  language.  Here  is  a  bit  from  one  of  them,  which 
chances  still  to  be  repeatable: 

Gracchus  loves  all  as  one,  and  thinks  that  so 

As  women  do  in  divers  countries  go 

In  divers  habits,  yet  are  still  one  kind. 

So  doth,  so  is  religion;  and  this  blind- 

Ness  too  much  light  breeds.     But  unmoved  thou 

Of  force  must  one,  and  forced  but  one  allow; 

And  the  right.     Ask  thy  father  which  is  she; 

Let  him  ask  his.     Though  Truth  and  Falsehood  be 

Near  twins,  yet  Truth  a  little  elder  is. 

For  not  keeping  of  accent,  no  doubt  Donne  deserved 
hanging;  but  he  could  plead  in  confession  and  avoid- 
ance this  intensity  which  was  all  his  own. 

He  never  lost  it,  furthermore;  rather  he  developed 
it.  In  his  graver  years,  for  example,  just  when  Web- 
ster was  publishing  that  preface  to  the  "White  Devil," 
Donne's  intensity  produced  such  lines  as  these : 

The  world  is  but  a  carcass;  thou  art  fed 

By  it,  but  as  a  worm  that  carcass  bred ; 

And  why  shouldst  thou,  poor  worm,  consider  more 

When  this  world  will  grow  better  than  before. 

Than  those  thy  fellow-worms  do  think  upon 

That  carcass's  last  resurrection? 


124   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

You  cannot  but  feel  the  intense  genuineness  of  this 
comparison.  At  the  same  time,  its  exasperating  over- 
ingenuity  is  just  of  the  kind  which  Dr.  Johnson  so 
stoutly  belabored  in  his  comments  on  the  figure  of  the 
compass,  to  which,  long  before,  Donne  had  likened  the 
souls  of  two  lovers : 

If  they  be  two,  they  are  two  so 

As  stiff  twin  compasses  are  two; 
Thy  soul,  the  fixed  foot,  makes  no  show 

To  move,  but  doth,  if  th'  other  do. 

And  though  it  in  the  centre  sit. 
Yet,  when  the  other  far  doth  roam, 

It  leaves,  and  hearkens  after  it, 

And  grows  erect,  as  that  comes  home. 

Such  wilt  thou  be  to  me,  who  must 

Like  th'  other  foot  obliquely  run; 
Thy  firmness  makes  my  circle  just, 

And  makes  me  end  where  I  begim. 

In  both  of  these  passages,  over-ingenious  though 
they  be,  you  can  feel  the  power  of  Donne.  In  neither, 
nor  in  anything  we  have  glanced  at  yet,  can  you 
feel  the  vividness  or  the  beauty  which  now  and  again 
consecrates  this  power.  For  an  example  of  his  vivid- 
ness, take  those  lines  from  the  "Calm,"  which  Jonson 
had  by  heart: 

No  use  of  lanthoms;  and  in  one  place  lay 
Feathers  and  dust,  to-day  and  yesterday. 


POETRY  125 

For  an  example  of  his  beauty,  take  stray  lines  from  the 
love-lyrics,  generally  so  far  from  austerity  that  there 
need  be  no  wonder  why  Donne  regretted  them  in  his 
reverend  days.  Yet,  even  at  his  sternest,  he  need  not 
have  cast  away  such  stanzas  as  this : 

O,  do  not  die,  for  I  shall  hate 

All  women  so,  when  thou  art  gone, 

That  thee  I  shall  not  celebrate, 
When  I  remember  thou  wast  one. 

Better,  still,  take  the  haunting  melody  of  those  two 
lines  of  Donne  which  are  most  familiar — so  familiar, 
indeed,  as  to  be  almost  hackneyed : 

I  long  to  talk  with  some  old  lover's  ghost, 
Who  died  before  the  god  of  love  was  bom. 

Already  we  have  dwelt  on  him  more  than  enough  to 
feel  that  intensity  of  individuality  which  made  his 
work  in  his  own  time  seem  real  beyond  the  rest,  and 
which,  with  all  its  disdain  of  amenity,  makes  his  verse 
in  these  days  of  ours  reveal  more  and  more  to  those 
who  ponder  it  most. 

Intense  individuality,  the  while,  is  of  all  artistic 
influences  the  most  destructive.  Crescent  art  any- 
where is  that  which  is  rooted  in  immemorial  conven- 
tion. Art  which  deliberately  contradicts  tradition  is 
bound,  however  genuine,  to  be  a  noble  heresy.  The 
heresiarchs  have  something  delusively  like  the  virtue 
of  the  saints.     It  is  only  when  we  trace  the  extinction 


126   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

of  their  followers  that  we  can  feel  the  tragedy  of  their 
faithful  and  honest  aberrations.  The  influence  of 
Spenser  could  never  quite  lose  the  amenity  of  his 
Italianate  grace;  that  of  Jonson  could  never  quite  lose 
the  civility  of  his  classical  poise;  that  of  Donne  was 
bound  to  fall  into  the  affectations  of  a  mannerism 
which  grew  lifeless  the  moment  the  master  who  vital- 
ized it  fell  asleep. 

Analogies  are  doubtless  misleading,  and  those  critics 
are  right  who  have  objected  to  the  commonplace  which 
has  asserted  that  Donne  was  an  Elizabethan  Brown- 
ing. Yet  there  is  a  suggestion  of  truth  in  the  ex- 
tended analogy — whose  very  imperfections  help  to 
correct  its  errors — which  would  liken  in  their  mutual 
relations  the  three  divergent  Elizabethans  on  whom 
we  have  now  touched  to  three  eminent  poets  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Spenser  was  less  like  Wordsworth 
than  Jonson  was  like  Tennyson;  and  Jonson  was  less 
like  Tennyson  than  Donne  was  like  Browning;  and 
Donne  was,  on  the  whole,  so  little  like  Browning  that 
the  comparison  by  itself  is  rather  misleading  than  help- 
ful. Yet  when  Spenser  died,  in  1599,  Jonson  and 
Donne  were  already  pointing  the  ways  in  which  Eliza- 
bethan poetry  must  disintegrate,  very  much  as,  when 
Wordsworth  died,  in  1850,  Tennyson  and  Browning 
were  already  pointing  the  divergent  ways  in  which 
the  English  poetry  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  be- 
gun to  lose  what  integrity  it  ever  had.  If  we  liken 
Spenser  to  Wordsworth,  accordingly,  and  Jonson  to 


POETRY  127 

Tennyson,  and  Donne  to  Browning,  we  may  feel — for 
all  the  dissimilarities  which  must  often  obscure  all  trace 
of  similarity — what  those  mean  who  believe,  in  our 
day,  that  human  expression  must  yield  to  natural  law  as 
surely  as  the  stars  in  their  courses. 

For,  though  it  would  be  foolish  to  say  that  Spenser, 
and  Jonson,  and  Donne  caused  the  disintegration  of 
Elizabethan  poetry,  there  can  be  no  doubt,  I  think, 
that  the  three  distinct  tendencies,  or  influences,  em- 
bodied in  the  work  of  these  three  divergent  masters 
portend,  with  precision,  the  courses  which  that  poet- 
ical disintegration  was  to  take. 


V 

THE  DISINTEGRATION   OF   LYRIC   POETRY 

In  approaching  this  consideration  of  the  separate 
literary  tendencies  which  found  expression  in  Spenser, 
in  Ben  Jonson,  and  in  Donne,  I  touched  on  the  fact 
that  the  ensuing  disintegration  of  Enghsh  poetry  was 
an  example  of  how  natural  law  revealed  its  power 
even  in  so  subtly  human  a  matter  as  the  development 
and  the  decline  of  literature.  Yet  no  man  has  been 
able  to  formulate  the  laws  which  dominate  human 
expression — perhaps  in  their  complexity  beyond  the 
range  of  generalization.  And  taking  refuge  in  such 
half-truths,  misleading  if  we  believe  them  wholly,  as 
marked  the  slow  waking  of  science  from  chaos,  men 
are  apt  nowadays  to  class  this  poet  or  that  as  if  he 
were  some  monstrous  creature  of  Jonsonian  humor. 
We  talk  of  the  influence  of  Spenser  much  as  the  old 
astrologers  prated  of  what  they  fancied  the  literal  in- 
fluence of  a  planet.  We  are  apt  to  be  more  neglectful 
still  of  complex  truth ;  more  unwilling,  indeed,  than 
our  astrologic  forbears,  to  admit,  without  discontent, 
how  influences  must  forever  intermingle.  That  the 
early  years  of  the  seventeenth  century  produced  poets 
who  reverently  imitated  Spenser  everyone  knows;  so 

128 


POETRY  129 

we  are  apt  to  call  them  Spenserian — as  if  imitation 
of  Spenser  were  all  their  story.  One  or  two  familiar 
passages  should  warn  us  of  our  danger.  Among  the 
poets  commonly  described  as  Spenserian  were  William 
Browne,  of  Tavistock;  Giles  Fletcher,  and  George 
Wither. 

Browne  surely  held  Spenser  his  master,  writing  of 
him  thus : 

He  sung  the  heroic  knights  of  Fairy-land 

In  lines  so  elegant,  of  such  command, 

That  had  the  Thracian  played  but  half  so  well, 

He  had  not  left  Eurydice  in  Hell. 

But  ere  he  ended  his  melodious  song 

An  host  of  angels  flew  the  clouds  among, 

And  rapt  this  swan  from  his  attentive  mates, 

To  make  him  one  of  their  associates 

In  Heaven's  fair  quire. 

And,  writing  pastorally,  Browne  could  follow  Spen- 
ser's manner  very  closely.  Take,  for  example,  lines 
like  these: 

As  when  a  woodman  on  the  greeny  lawns, 
Where  daily  chants  the  sad-sweet  nightingale. 

Would  count  his  herd,  more  bucks,  more  prickets,  fawns 
Rush  from  the  copse  and  put  him  from  his  tale; 

So  when  my  willing  muse  would  gladly  dress 

Her  several  graces  in  immortal  lines, 
Plenty  empoors  her. 

Superficially  this  might  be  mistaken  for  Spenser; 
but,  looking  a  little  closer,  you  will  observe  how  the 


I30   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

oddities  of  Spenser's  vocabulary  have  given  place  to 
a  purity  of  phrase  almost  like  Jonson's,  You  can  dis- 
cern, too,  in  Browne's  final  paradox  a  suggestion  of 
"metaphysical  poetry,"  And  so,  perhaps,  you  will 
not  feel  the  wonder  we  are  apt  to  feel  at  first  when 
we  are  forced  to  admit  that  in  all  probability  it  was 
not  Jonson,  but  this  Spenserian  Browne,  who  wrote 
that  beautiful  little  epitaph : 

Underneath  this  sable  hearse 
Lies  the  subject  of  all  verse: 
Sidney's  sister,  Pembroke's  mother: 
Death,  ere  thou  hast  slain  another, 
Fair,  and  learned,  and  good  as  she 
Time  shall  throw  a  dart  at  thee. 

Again,  the  very  opening  pages  of  Giles  Fletcher's 
"Christ's  Victorie  in  Heaven"  contain  line  after  line 
which  prove  him  Spenserian.    Take  the  fourth  stanza : 

Ye  Sacred  writings,  in  whose  antique  leaves 
The  memories  of  Heaven  entreasured  He, 
Say,  what  might  be  the  cause  that  Mercie  heaves 
The  dust  of  sin  above  the  industrious  skie. 
And  lets  it  not  to  dust  and  ashes  flie? 

Or  take  the  sixth  stanza,  with  its  clear  allusion  to  the 
last  lines  of  the  "Faerie  Queene" : 

There  is  a  place  beyond  that  flaming  hill. 

From  whence  the  starres  their  thin  appearance  shed; 

A  place  beyond  all  place,  where  never  ill, 


POETRY  131 

Nor  impure  thought  was  ever  harbored, 

But  saintly  heros  are  forever  s'ed 

To  keepe  an  everlasting  Sabbaoth's  rest. 

Here  is  Spenser,  no  doubt,  his  music  harshened  but 
audible  still;  yet  here,  too,  are  Jonsonianly  English 
words,  in  place  of  that  "no  language"  which  Spenser 
writ.  And  the  paradoxes  with  which  Fletcher  begins 
the  poem  indicate  more  metaphysical  influence  than 
you  can  trace  anywhere  in  Browne : 

The  birth  of  him  that  no  beginning  knewe, 

Yet  gives  beginning  to  all  that  are  borne; 

And  how  the  Infinite  far  greater  grew 

By  growing  less,  and  how  the  rising  Mome 

That  shot  from  heav'n,  did  back  to  heav'n  retoume: 

The  obsequies  of  Him  that  could  not  die. 

And  death  of  life,  end  of  etemitie, 

How  worthily  He  died,  that  died  unworthily; — 

Is  the  first  flame,  wherewith  my  whiter  Muse 
Doth  burne  in  heavenly  love,  such  love  to  tell. 

A  case  might  be  made  out  from  these  lines  that  Giles 
Fletcher  was  a  follower  rather  of  Donne. 

In  Wither's  Pastorals,  too,  are  fainter  echoes  of 
Spenser  in  plenty;  the  music  has  lost  its  melody,  but 
not  its  rhythm.  Yet  what  makes  Wither  a  living  poet 
are  not  these  pastorals,  nor  yet  his  somewhat  pale 
satires;  and  surely  it  is  not  the  flood  of  devout  verse 
which  welled  from  him  in  his  later  years.  It  is  that 
single  song  of  his  earlier  days: 


132   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

Shall  I,  wasting  in  despair 
Dye,  because  a  woman's  fair? 

And  this  is  neither  Spenserian,  nor  quite  an  utterance 
of  the  Tribe  of  Ben,  nor  yet  metaphysical.  It  is 
rather  a  sporadic  survival  of  that  spirit  which  made 
integral,  and  not  disintegrating,  the  lyrics  of  the  spa- 
cious days  themselves. 

To  call  this  group  of  poets  Spenserian,  accordingly, 
meaning  thereby  that  they  echoed  nobody  but  Spenser, 
might  w^ell  seem  mistaken ;  just  as  it  might  seem  to 
assert  that  the  Tribe  of  Ben  included  no  man  who  did 
not  yield  himself  body  and  soul  to  that  robust  chief; 
or  still  more,  as  it  might  to  pretend  that  poets  in 
whose  lines  we  can  detect  "metaphysical"  ingenuities 
were  all  disciples  only  of  Donne.  And  yet  the  use 
of  these  three  divergent  terms,  so  frequent  in  discus- 
sions of  English  poetry  from  the  accession  of  King 
James  to  the  death  of  Charles  I.,  points  to  a  real 
fact.  Up  to  the  time  when  Spenser's  individuality 
finally  declared  itself,  English  poetry  seemed  integral 
in  spirit — marked  chiefly  by  the  spontaneous  enthu- 
siasm of  its  versatile  and  winsome  experiment.  A 
very  little  later  than  Spenser,  there  emerged,  side  by 
side,  the  almost  equally  distinct  figures  of  Jonson  and 
of  Donne,  very  different  from  each  other,  different 
as  well  from  Spenser,  but  like  him  and  like  each  other 
in  the  fact  that  each  of  them  brought  to  a  point  be- 
yond that  where  their  predecessors  had  left  it  the 
kind   of   poetry   which   he   made   peculiarly   his   own. 


POETRY  133 

With  them,  in  brief,  experiment  came  to  the  dignity 
of  mastery ;  and,  as  we  look  at  their  work  in  historical 
perspective,  their  individualities  stand  out  more  and 
more  distinctly. 

With  the  poets  who  swiftly  followed  them,  the  case 
is  different.  It  is  not  that  these  were  only  conscious 
imitators,  nor  yet  that  many  of  them  deliberately  imi- 
tated one  master,  and  only  one.  These  later  poets, 
besides,  prove,  when  one  ponders  over  them  with  care, 
to  have  distinct  individualities  of  their  own.  But  of 
all  together,  the  fact  remains  evident  that  none  has 
an  individuality  so  distinct  as  instantly  to  impress  us. 
Rather  we  feel  at  first  that  each  is  no  longer  experi- 
mental, but  that  he  is  openly  or  tacitly  aware  of  how 
admirably  the  art  he  would  practise  has  already  been 
mastered ;  and  that  his  task  has  therefore  become  dif- 
ferent from  that  which  confronted  the  masters  them- 
selves. Accepting  their  manners  and  their  achieve- 
ments as  models,  as  traditions,  as  conventions,  he  seems 
first  of  all  one  of  their  followers,  and  only  second- 
arily himself. 

This  is  surely  true  of  those  poets  commonly  called 
Spenserian — Giles  Fletcher  and  Phineas,  we  may  take 
as  types  of  them,  with  Browne  and  Wither.  No 
doubt  each  of  them  deserves  study  in  detail.  Each 
has  his  beauties ;  each  his  faults ;  each  something  like 
a  message  of  his  own;  each,  too,  his  somewhat  intri- 
cate relations  with  the  men  about  him  and  with  the 
future,  as  well  as  with  their  common  master.     We 


134   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

might  remark,  for  example,  how  the  Fletchers — Puri- 
tan in  temper,  though  not  extremely  so  in  instant 
aspect — may  be  regarded  as  the  link  between  Spenser 
and  Milton.  The  subject-matter  of  Giles  Fletcher's 
"Christ's  Victories,"  and  the  Hell  and  Lucifer  of 
Phineas  Fletcher's  "Apollyonists,"  to  go  no  further, 
have  such  analogies  to  the  great  epic  of  Milton's  later 
years  that  even  for  this  alone  the  brothers  would  be 
memorable.  We  might  touch  on  the  fastidious  culture 
of  Browne,  revealing  itself  not  only  in  traces  through- 
out his  fluent  work  of  how  deeply  and  lovingly  he  had 
read  our  elder  poets,  from  Chaucer  down,  but  also  in 
that  exquisite  care  for  phrase  which  has  made  more 
than  one  modern  critic  liken  him  to  Keats.  We  might 
recall  how  Wither  was  first  a  royalist  and  then  a  parlia- 
mentarian; how  he  repented  of  the  amatory  verse  of 
his  earlier  years;  how  his  rather  mild  satires  got  him 
into  disproportionate  trouble;  how  his  pastoral  poems 
are  the  most  deeply  marked  with  the  imprint  of  his 
Elizabethan  master;  and  how  the  floods  of  sacred  and 
occasional  verse  which  followed  have  now  and  again  a 
simplicity  or  a  commonplaceness,  or  oftener  both,  not 
wholly  unlike  what  make  so  tedious  the  inexhaustible 
productions  which  poured  from  Wordsworth  after  his 
inspiration  was  exhausted.  More,  too,  and  more — 
merits  and  faults  alike — we  could  doubtless  find  in 
one  and  all.  More  names,  too,  we  might  doubtless 
mention.  Yet,  when  all  was  done,  and  we  strove  to 
render  ourselves  account  of  what  we  had  thus  scru- 


POETRY  135 

tinized  in  detail,  the  facts  which  we  should  finally 
remember  are  probably  those  which  have  caused  critics 
to  group  these  men  together. 

On  the  whole,  they  impress  us  as  disciples  chiefly 
of  Spenser — as  practitioners  of  the  art  which  his 
adventurous  experiment  discovered.  Spenser  him- 
self, in  the  full  Elizabethan  days,  imitated  Italian 
models;  but  his  achievement  was  so  gloriously  his 
own  that  no  reader  of  Spenser  ever  thinks  of 
those  models  as  primary.  His  followers  imitated 
him — perhaps  as  freely,  to  their  own  minds,  as 
he  had  imitated  his  own  masters.  With  them, 
nevertheless,  for  all  their  individuality,  you  always 
think  first  of  Spenser.  He  remains  dominant;  what 
the  Spenserians  themselves  accomplished  seems  only 
secondary.  And  so,  when  we  further  remember  that 
this  Spenserian  poetry  was  at  its  height  in  the  time 
of  King  James  I. — when  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  dom- 
inated the  stage,  and  when  Webster's  work  was  begin- 
ning, and  Ford's  and  Massinger's,  too — we  have  said 
of  the  Spenserians  what  makes  them  chiefly  significant 
in  our  present  study. 

It  was  in  King  James's  time  that  Ben  Jonson  was 
at  his  best  and  most  potent;  at  that  same  time,  too, 
the  poems  of  Donne,  mostly  written  earlier  and  mostly 
published  later,  were  growing  more  and  more  familiar 
in  private  copies.  The  influence  of  each,  no  doubt, 
steadily  increased;  but  the  full  effect  of  each  did  not 
instantly  appear.     In  Professor  Schelling's  excellent 


136   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

introduction  to  the  volume  of  "Seventeenth  Century 
Lyrics,"  with  which  he  supplemented  his  "Elizabethan 
Lyrics,"  he  points  out  how  the  poems  which  have  the 
distinctive  quality  of  the  new  century  hardly  began 
before  1625.  The  poets  who  are  regularly  grouped  in 
the  Tribe  of  Ben  were  not  at  their  best  until  fifteen  or 
twenty  years  later. 

It  was  twelve  years  after  the  accession  of  King 
Charles,  indeed,  that  his  sturdy  Elizabethan  laureate 
died.  Early  in  the  following  year,  1638,  appeared 
a  volume  of  memorable  poems  by  many  of  his  admir- 
ing disciples.  The  names  of  the  contributors  to  this 
"Jonsonus  Virbius;  or,  the  Memory  of  Ben  Jonson 
revived  by  the  Friends  of  the  Muses,"  suggest  at  once 
the  numbers  of  the  school  he  had  founded,  the  breadth 
of  its  social  and  intellectual  range,  and  the  slight 
poetic  eminence  which  most  of  its  members  attained. 
In  general,  the  makers  of  these  perfunctory  occasional 
verses  in  the  dead  master's  manner  are  of  only  his- 
torical importance.  Lord  Falkland  opens  the  volume 
with  a  long  eclogue.  Then  come  ten  lines  by  Lord 
Buckhurst;  then  longer  series  of  couplets  by  Sir  John 
Beaumont  and  Sir  Thomas  Hawkins;  Henry  King 
follows,  and  Henry  Coventry,  and  Thomas  May,  and 
Dudley  Diggs,  and  George  Fortescue.  Then,  at  last, 
William  Habington  reminds  us  that  we  are  still  within 
the  confines  of  literature;  and  next  comes  a  page  of 
couplets  by  Waller,  followed  by  five  more  couplets 
bearing  the  signature  of  James  Howell.    John  Vernon, 


POETRY  137 

e  Societ  In  Temp,  who  comes  next,  takes  us  back  no- 
where. Cleveland,  who  follows  him  with  a  gleam  of 
familiar  light,  seems  to  have  written  two  poems — one 
signed  only  with  his  initials.  J.  Mayne  then  contributes 
the  longest  item  since  Falkland's  eclogue.  And  so  on. 
These  are  the  ensuing  names :  W.  Cartwright,  Jo.  Rut- 
ter,  Ow.  Feltham,  George  Donne,  Shackerly  Marmion, 
John  Ford,  R.  Bridecake,  Richard  West,  R.  Meade, 
and  H.  Ramsay.  Sir  Francis  Wortley,  by  way  of 
variety,  then  contributes  a  Latin  epitaph  ;  he  is  followed 
by  a  few  other  Latin  versifiers,  and  b}'  a  final  anony- 
mous set  of  verses  in  Greek.  Of  all  these  latter  names, 
the  only  one  instantly  familiar  to  modern  readers  of 
poetry  is  that  of  Ford.  The  list,  as  a  whole,  rather  com- 
ically reminds  one  of  that  in  which,  two  centuries  later, 
Edgar  Allan  Poe  brought  together  the  names  of  the 
Literati — now  otherwise  extinct — who  illuminated  in 
1840  the  literature  of  New  York.  For  the  Tribe  of 
Ben,  so  far  as  it  still  lives,  we  shall  have  to  look 
elsewhere  than  among  these  lucid  and  lifeless  makers 
of  lines  to  his  memory. 

The  best  remembered  among  his  disciples  are  three 
courtiers  of  King  Charles — Carew,  Suckling,  and 
Lovelace — who  made  graceful  verses  for  fashion's 
sake;  and  the  solitary  Robert  Herrick,  on  whom  we 
shall  touch  a  little  later.  Of  the  three  courtier  poets, 
Carew  was  the  eldest,  on  the  whole  the  best,  and  the 
least  salient.  He  could  write  after  Donne,  when  he 
cl"iose ;  witness  the  opening  of  the  elegy  he  made  to 
Donne's  memory : 


138   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

Can  we  not  force  from  widow'd  Poetry, 

Now  thou  art  dead,  great  Donne,  one  Elegy 

To  crown  thy  Hearse?    Why  yet  did  we  not  trust, 

Though  with  unkneaded,  dough-baked  prose,  thy  dust; 

Such  as  the  unsizar'd  Lecturer,  from  the  flower 

Of  fading  Rhetoric,  short-lived  as  his  hour. 

Dry  as  the  sand  that  measures  it,  might  lay 

Upon  the  ashes  on  the  funeral  day? 

Witness,  too,  the  extravagance  of  Carew's  occasional 
conceits  : 

Oh,  whither  is  my  fair  Sun  fled 

Bearing  his  light,  not  heat,  away? 
If  thou  repose  in  the  moist  bed 

Of  the  Sea  Queen,  bring  back  the  day 
To  our  dark  clime,  and  thou  shalt  lie 

Bathed  in  the  sea,  flows  from  mine  eye. 

But  he  mostly  followed  Jonson,  yet  with  something 
effeminate  always  weakening  the  virility  of  the  ac- 
knowledged master.  In  a  Prologue  to  Jonson's  "New 
Inn,"  after  touching  on  Ben's  detractors,  he  closes  his 
panegyric  thus : 

Thou  art  not  of  their  rank,  the  quarrel  lies 
Within  thine  own  verge:  then  let  this  suffice — 
The  wiser  world  doth  greater  Thee  confess 
Then  all  men  else,  than  thy  self  only  less. 

And  the  grace  of  Carew's  verse,  sentimentally  femin- 
izing Jonson's,  you  can  feel  in  stanzas  like  this : 

Ask  me  no  more  where  Jove  bestows, 
When  June  is  past,  the  fading  rose? 


POETRY  139 

For  in  your  Beauty's  orient  deep 
These  flowers,  as  in  their  causes,  sleep. 

Ask  me  no  more,  whither  do  stray 
The  golden  atoms  of  the  day? 
For  in  pure  love  heaven  did  prepare 
These  powders  to  enrich  thy  hair. 

Better  still,  perhaps,  you  will  feel  at  once  his  rela- 
tion to  Jonson  and  the  limits  of  it  in  his  epitaphs. 
Here  is  a  bit  from  that  to  Lady  Mary  Wentworth, 
who  died  at  eighteen : 

Good  to  the  Poor,  to  kindred  dear, 
To  servants  kind,  to  friendship  clear, 
To  nothing  but  herself  severe; 

So,  though  a  virgin,  yet  a  Bride 
To  every  grace,  she  justified 
A  chaste  Polygamy,  and  died. 

There  are  graces  here  which  Jonson  could  hardly 
have  excelled,  and  a  conceit  which  Donne  could  not 
have  parodied.  That  same  conceit  meanwhile  typifies 
— enough  for  us — the  decadent  eroticism  which  by 
this  time  had  invaded  not  only  the  drama  but  lyric 
poetry  as  well. 

Carew  was  tolerably  even.  With  Suckling  and 
Lovelace  the  case  is  different.  The  good  work  of 
each  is  rare  enough  to  be  memorably  salient.  One 
or  two  of  Suckling's  lyrics  are  still  familiar: 


I40   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

Why  so  pale  and  wan,  fond  lover? 

Prithee  why  so  pale? 
Will,  when  looking  well  can't  move  her, 

Looking  ill  prevail? 

Prithee  why  so  pale? 

Everyone  knows  that  stanza ;  this,  too : 

Out  upon  it,  I  have  loved 

Three  whole  days  together. 
And  am  like  to  love  three  more, 

If  it  prove  fair  weather. 

In  these  one  feels  a  touch  of  Jonson's  grace;  but  it  is 
weakened  by  careless  triviality.  And  a  less  familiar 
stanza  of  Suckling's  indicates  his  relation  to  Jonson 
with  odd  precision.  Remember  "Drink  to  me  only 
with  thine  eyes,"  and  then  listen  to  this  sweetly  feeble 
echo  of  it : 

I  prithee  send  me  back  my  heart, 

Since  I  cannot  have  thine; 
For  if  from  yours  you  will  not  part 

Why  then  shouldst  thou  have  mine? 

A  feeble  Son  of  Ben  he  was  after  all.  And  so,  in 
general,  Lovelace  seems,  too ;  but  the  one  lasting  poem 
of  Lovelace  approaches  perfection  more  nearly  than  we 
can  quite  realize  without  a  momentary  comparison  of 
its  second  line  with  the  figure  he  stole  from  one  of 
Habington's  stanzas  to  "Roses  in  the  Bosom  of 
Castara" : 


POETRY  141 

Ye  blushing  virgins  happy  are 

In  the  chaste  nunn'ry  of  her  breasts, 

For  he'd  prophane  so  chaste  a  fair, 
Who  e'er  should  call  them  Cupid's  nests. 

A  single  glance  is  enough  for  such  sentimentality  as 
that;  it  is  the  glory  of  Lovelace  that  when  the  stress 
of  the  Civil  Wars  was  at  hand,  he  was  stirred  to  that 
one  utterance  of  his  which  no  degree  of  repetition  can 
tarnish : 

Tell  me  not,  sweet,  I  am  unkind, 

That  from  the  nunnery 
Of  thy  chaste  breast  and  quiet  mind 

To  war  and  arms  I  fly. 

True,  a  new  mistress  now  I  cha^e, 

The  first  foe  in  the  field; 
And  with  a  stronger  faith  embrace 

A  sword,  a  horse,  a  shield. 

Yet  this  inconstancy  is  such 

As  you  too  shall  adore: 
I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  much 

Loved  I  not  honour  more. 

Such  was  the  Tribe  of  Ben  at  its  best — all  but 
Herrick,  of  whom  by  and  by.  They  kept  the  sense 
of  form  which  he  had  wrested  from  his  classics ;  they 
lost  his  virile  muscularity;  they  sentimentalized  his 
graces,  weakening  them,  too,  with  occasional  "meta- 
physical" fancies ;  but  they  had  a  charm  which  might 
seem  their  own,  if  we  were  not  so  sure  that  its  secret 


142   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

came  from  Jonson  as  straight  as  the  rhythm  of  the 
Spenserians  came  from  the  "Shepherd's  Calendar" 
and  the  "Faerie  Queene." 

Throughout  our  swift  scrutiny  of  both  we  must 
have  felt  traces  of  that  over-ingenuity — that  "meta- 
physical" elaboration  of  conceit — which  is  generally 
traced  to  the  influence  of  Donne.  The  Spenserians 
thus  seem  not  only  to  follow  Spenser,  with  harshen- 
ing  variations  of  his  music;  the  Tribe  of  Ben  seems 
not  only  to  follow  Jonson,  with  steps  lacking  the 
firmness  of  his  virility ;  but  both  seem  to  follow  Donne 
as  well,  with  little  trace  of  the  intensity  which  was 
his  own  justification.  Something  of  Jonson's  influ- 
ence, more,  too,  of  Spenser's,  shows  itself  in  the  work 
of  that  other  group  of  poets  which  is  sometimes  called 
"metaphysical,"  as  if  Donne  had  been  their  only  mas- 
ter. The  religious  poets,  I  mean,  of  whom  perhaps 
the  most  typical  are  George  Herbert  and  Vaughan 
and  Crashaw.  Each  and  all  had  an  intensity  which 
makes  intensity  seem  the  chief  characteristic  of  this 
diverse  yet  distinct  group.  You  will  feel  this  in- 
stantly in  some  familiar  lines  from  Vaughan, — the 
first  concerning  earth,  the  second  concerning  heaven. 
Of  the  world  he  writes : 

I  saw  Eternity  the  other  night 

Like  a  great  ring  of  pure  and  endless  light, 

All  calm,  as  it  was  bright; 
And  round  beneath  it.  Time  in  hours,  days,  years, 

Driv'n  by  the  spheres, 


POETRY  143 

Like  a  vast  shadow  moved,  in  which  the  world 
And  all  her  train  were  hurled. 

Here  is  something  like  an  intricate  variation  on  some 
melody  of  Spenser,  sweetening,  yet  not  weakening, 
that  intensity  and  ingenuity  which  makes  many  critics 
name  Vaiighan,  for  all  his  spiritual  individuality,  a 
mere  follower  of  Donne.  Of  heaven  he  writes  with  a 
simplicity  like  Jonson's,  yet  with  a  holy  intensity  of 
lyric  feeling  beyond  any  fire  which  ever  emanated  from 
Saint  Ben : 

My  soul,  there  is  a  country 

Afar  beyond  the  stars. 
Where  stands  a  winged  sentry 

All  skilful  in  the  wars. 
There,  above  noise  and  danger. 

Sweet  Peace  sits  crowned  with  smiles^ 
And  one  bom  in  a  manger 

Commands  the  beauteous  files. 
If  thou  canst  get  but  thither. 

There  grows  the  flower  of  peace, 
The  rose  that  cannot  wither. 

Thy  fortress  and  thy  ease. 

Here  is  a  new  spirit — new  not  only  in  these  studies 
of  ours,  but  in  all  English  poetry.  Combining  as  they 
did  that  deep  personal  sense  of  religion  and  those 
austere  ideals  of  personal  purity  which  made  the  true 
strength  of  Puritanism  with  an  exquisitely  cultivated 
sense  of  beauty — like  that  which  ennobled  even  the 
license  of  the  Cavaliers — these  religious  poets,  "meta- 


144   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

physical,"  if  you  will,  expressed  beyond  Spenserians 
or  Sons  of  Ben,  an  everlasting  truth.  There  are  moods 
in  which  one  feels  them  wonderful  exponents  of  what 
preserves,  among  all  the  shocks  and  deadenings  of 
human  frailty,  the  diuturnity  of  the  Church.  But 
they  were  not  only  thus  poets  of  a  new  spirit ;  they 
were  also  lingering  followers  of  their  Elizabethan 
masters.  In  their  work,  as  surely  as  in  that  of  their 
contemporaries  at  whom  we  have  glanced  before,  one 
feels,  when  one  pauses  to  define  it  in  the  perspective 
of  the  centuries,  how  the  poetic  form,  even  of  their 
spiritual  utterances,  was  inevitably  influenced  by  the 
poetic  forms  of  the  generation  before  them.  What 
is  more,  this  intensity  is  strangely  different  from  the 
integral  enthusiasm  of  the  times  which  they  could 
almost  remember.  The  fervor  of  Elizabethan  poetry 
had  in  it  something  which  seemed  to  emanate  from  the 
whole  English  nation.  The  fervor  of  the  religious 
poets  who  were  at  their  best  under  King  Charles  was 
only — though  sincerely — individual.  Each  writes  as 
one  apart  from  the  world. 

The  English  lyric  never  had  such  deep-rooted  popu- 
lar life  as  the  English  drama;  and  so,  in  a  way,  the 
changes  of  the  years  affected  it  far  less.  You  can 
transplant  flowers  and  shrubs ;  to  uproot  trees  is  fatal. 
Yet,  in  the  history  of  other  than  dramatic  poetry,  we 
have  traced  a  course  like  that  which  brought  the 
drama  to  an  end.  This  lyric  poetry  began,  like  the 
drama,   with   free,   enthusiastic  experiment,   breaking 


POETRY  145 

from  old  conventions.  Then  came  a  moment  of  mas- 
tery. Then  came  the  disintegration  which  could  not 
help  following  from  the  separate  manner  of  the  diver- 
gent masters.  The  Elizabethans  had  made  their  new 
conventions ;  the  later  men  must  perforce  submit  to 
these  new  authorities.  Whatever  variety  of  beautiful 
detail  the  later  poets  might  attempt,  they  could  not 
help  being  increasingly  conscious  of  the  authority  im- 
posed on  them  by  the  masterpieces  already  achieved 
in  the  manner  which  a  generation  before  was  new  and 
free.  And  so,  though  without  either  the  corruption 
or  the  servility  which  marked  the  decline  of  the  stage 
from  Shakspere  to  Shirley,  we  have  found  that 
English  lyric  poetry  disintegrated,  along  with  the 
drama,  until — half  unwittingly — we  are  far  from  the 
days  when  we  could  contentedly  summarize  the  spirit 
of  it  in  that  single  song  of  Campion's. 

It  had  arrived,  in  fact,  at  a  point  where,  for  coming 
men,  the  choice  seemed  to  lie  between  exaggeration 
of  newly  grown  conventions  or  deliberate  reaction 
from  them.  In  those  very  days  both  tendencies  were 
evident.  The  seventeenth  century  had  two  poets  of 
vast  contemporary  fame,  whose  work  now  seems  so 
dead  that  we  marvel  how  it  could  ever  have  been 
alive.  One  of  these,  Sir  William  Davenant,  seems 
truly  as  hollow  a  sham  as  ever  was  his  shameless 
sham  bastardy.  The  other,  Cowley,  had  a  spark  of 
the  true  fire,  and  perhaps  more.  In  Milton's  own 
day,  good  men  held  him  Milton's  better.     But,  like 


146   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

the  shams  of  Davenant,  the  ingenious  excesses  of  Cow- 
ley need  detain  us  no  longer  thus  when  we  have 
discerned  in  them  examples  of  how  soon  conventions, 
when  they  are  followed  with  servility,  must  prove 
lifeless.  In  these  same  years,  as  Mr.  Gosse  has  pointed 
out  so  clearly,  Waller,  a  poet  partly  of  the  Tribe  of 
Ben,  openly  rejected  the  older  conventions  and  marked 
— with  poems  of  great  historic  interest — the  course 
which  English  poetry  was  to  take  on  its  way  to  the 
couplet  of  Pope.  Denham,  too,  one  might  recall  a 
very  little  later,  with  his  "Cooper's  Hill," — that  har- 
binger of  the  deep  poetry  of  nature  still  to  come, 
which  Dryden  once  called  "the  exact  standard  of  good 
writing."  Historically  important  though  they  be, 
however,  none  of  these  seem  precisely  the  most  typical 
man  of  their  time.  In  1600,  you  will  remember,  I 
found  my  memory  unconsciously  selecting  as  typical 
a  lyric  of  Campion's;  in  1648  I  find  that  my  memory, 
with  equal  persistency,  selects  the  work  of  that  one 
follower  in  the  Tribe  of  Ben  whom  I  have  therefore 
reserved  till  now — Robert  Herrick. 

Partly,  no  doubt,  this  is  a  personal  matter.  When 
I  turn  to  most  of  the  poets  of  King  Charles's  time, 
I  find  myself  willing  to  delight  in  their  graces,  but 
glad,  after  all,  when  the  task  of  seeking  those  graces 
is  done.  Herrick,  on  the  other  hand,  is  never  weari- 
some. A  loyal  son  of  Ben,  delighting  with  a  quiet 
zest  all  his  own  in  the  convivialities  with  which  his 
robust  master  was  apt  to  be  surrounded,  he  was  forced 


POETRY  147 

by  chance  into  the  soHtude  of  a  country  parsonage. 
The  "Noble  Numbers"  prove  him  not  faithless  to 
his  spiritual  duties;  here  is  the  first  stanza  of  them 
on  which  my  eye  chances  to  fall : 

Lord,  I  am  like  to  mistletoe, 
Which  has  no  root,  and  cannot  grow 
Or  prosper  but  by  that  same  tree 
It  clings  about;  so  I  by  Thee. 

But  it  is  not  thus  that  one  thinks  of  him.  He  generally 
seems  the  sportive  parson,  ready  out  of  hours  to  take 
simple,  gay,  pensive  delight  in  the  trivialities  which 
can  console  country  solitude.  So  he  sang  his  little 
songs  of  pleasure  in  country  sports,  in  fruits  and 
flowers,  in  pretty  girls;  and  through  them  all  runs 
something  like  a  bird's  note  —  exquisite,  untiring, 
sweetly  repetitory,  always  ready  to  begin  afresh. 

One  can  feel  it  in  that  little  quatrain  from  the 
"Noble  Numbers."  One  can  feel  it  in  his  fantastic 
little  "Prayer  to  Ben  Jonson" : 

When  I  a  verse  shall  make, 

Know  I  have  pray'd  thee, 
For  old  religion's  sake, 

Saint  Ben,  to  aid  me. 
Make  the  way  smooth  for  me, 

When  I,  thy  Herrick, 
Knowing  thee,  on  my  knee 

Offer  my  lyric. 
Candles  I'll  give  to  thee, 

And  a  new  altar. 
And  then,  Saint  Ben,  shalt  be 

Writ  in  my  psalter. 


148   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

One  can  feel  Herrick's  peculiar  quality,  more  dis- 
tinctly still,  in  the  lines,  scattered  through  the  Hesper- 
ides,  which  enshrine  the  pretty  memory  of  his  country 
servant : 

I 

Prew,  my  dearest  maid,  is  sick 

Almost  to  be  lunatic. 

iEsculapius,  come  and  bring 

Means  for  her  recovering; 

And  a  gallant  cock  shall  be 

Offered  up  by  her  to  thee. 

II 

These  summer  birds  did  with  thy  master  stay 
The  times  of  warmth,  but  then  they  flew  away, 
Leaving  their  poet,  being  now  grown  old, 
Exposed  to  all  the  coming  winter's  cold. 
But  thou,  kind  Prew,  didst  with  my  fates  abide 
As  well  the  winter's  as  the  summer's  tide; 
For  which  thy  love,  live  with  thy  master  here, 
Not  one,  but  all  the  seasons  of  the  year. 

Ill 

Here,  here  I  live  with  what  my  board 
Can  with  the  smallest  cost  afford. 
Though  ne'er  so  mean  the  viands  be. 
They  will  content  my  Prew  and  me. 
Or  pea,  or  bean,  or  wort,  or  beet, 
Whatever  comes,  content  makes  sweet. 
We  bless  our  fortunes  when  we  see 
Our  own  beloved  privacy; 
And  like  our  living,  where  we're  known 
To  very  few,  or  else  to  none. 


POETRY  149 

And  when  at  last  she  died,  he  made  an  epitaph  for  her 
which  muses  might  have  inspired  through  Saint  Ben's 
own  conduits : 

IV 

In  this  little  urn  is  laid 

Prudence  Baldwin,  once  my  maid: 

From  whose  happy  spark  here  let 

Spring  the  purple  violet. 

Yet  one  can  feel  that  little  quatrain  to  be  not  Jon- 
son's,  but  Herrick's.  Browne's  lines  on  the  Countess 
of  Pembroke  are  indistinguishable  from  lines  by  Ben. 
Herrick,  devout  worshipper  of  his  pagan  saint  though 
he  were,  has  left  hardly  a  phrase  which  is  not  sweet 
with  his  own  dainty,  country  melody. 

So,  in  his  own  way  and  in  his  own  time,  his  verses 
spring  to  memory  more  and  more.  In  miniature,  in 
pretty  statement  and  sweetly  fantastic  grace,  he  finally 
oiitdoes  the  master.  One  may  well  linger  over  him 
until  one  forget  for  a  while  all  but  the  delight  which 
never  fails.  Thus  he  becomes  the  poet  of  his  time 
who,  at  least  in  my  memory,  seems,  by  unconscious 
selection,  the  most  typical. 

If,  with  this  aspect  of  Herrick  in  mind,  we  turn 
to  compare  him  with  poets  who  were  typical  of  Eng- 
lish literature  forty  years  before  him,  we  shall  find 
a  startling  contrast.  There  is  no  better  way  to  show 
it  than  by  reverting  for  a  moment  to  the  "Faerie 
Queene."  In  the  midst  of  this  first  great  outburst 
of   our   triumphant    poetry — freed    at    last    from    the 


ISO   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

cramping  distortions  of  the  untamed  old  language 
from  whose  bondage  it  broke  its  way  to  life — there 
lies,  half  hidden,  a  lovely  little  song.  Spenser,  no 
doubt,  translated  it  directly  from  Tasso,  and  Tasso 
had  probably  found  in  Ausonius  what  is  now  its  most 
familiar  phrase.  But  Spenser's  translation  is  so  ad- 
mirable that  whoever  reads  it  must  instinctively  think 
of  it  as  if  it  were  Spenser's  own : 

The  whiles  some  one  did  chaunt  this  lovely  lay: 
Ah!  see,  whoso  faire  thing  doest  fain  to  see, 

In  springing  flowre  the  image  of  thy  day. 
Ah!  see  the  Virgin  Rose,  how  sweetly  shee 
Doth  first  peepe  foorth  with  bashfull  modestie, 

That  fairer  seemes  the  lesse  ye  see  her  may. 
Lo!  see  soon  after  how  more  bold  and  free 

Her  bared  bosom  she  doth  broad  display; 

Lo!  see  soon  after  how  she  fades  and  falls  away. 

So  passeth,  in  the  passing  of  a  day, 

Of  mortall  life  the  leafe,  the  bud,  the  flowre; 
Ne  more  doth  flourish  after  first  decay, 

That  earst  was  sought  to  deck  both  bed  and  bowre 

Of  many  a  lady,  many  a  Paramoure; 
Gather  therefore  the  Rose,  whilest  yet  is  prime 

For  soone  comes  age  that  will  ber  pride  deflowre; 
Gather  the  Rose  of  love  whilest  yet  is  time, 
Whilest  loving  thou  mayest  loved  be  with  equall  crime. 

You  cannot  fail  to  feel  the  likeness  of  those  last  four 
lines  to  the  quatrain  of  Herrick  which  has  chanced 
to  become  the  most  familiar  of  all  he  ever  wrote: 


POETRY  151 

Gather  ye  rosebuds  while  ye  may 

Old  time  is  still  a-flying: 
And  this  same  flower  that  smiles  to-day 

To-morrow  will  be  dying. 

The  very  likeness  between  these  passages  empha- 
sizes the  still  more  evident  contrast.  And,  taken  to- 
gether, the  likeness  and  the  contrast  imply  the  whole 
history  of  English  poetry  during  the  period  of  which 
we  have  been  trying  to  render  ourselves  account. 
Fifty  years  and  more  apart,  two  English  poets — each 
in  his  way  a  thorough  man  of  his  time — were  at- 
tracted by  the  same  sweetly  sentimental  fragment  of 
dainty  classical  eroticism : 

CoUige,  virgo,  rosas,  dum  flos  novus,  et  nova  pubes, 
Et  memor  esto  aevum  sic  properare  tuum, 

it  runs  in  Ausonius.  Each  translated  this  into  a 
form  so  deeply  English  that  one  is  half  surprised  to 
find  its  origin  in  antiquity;  and  the  two  forms  have 
a  likeness  which  makes  one  guess  that  Spenser's  lines 
may  have  haunted  the  memory  of  Herrick  just  as 
Tasso's  version  of  the  passage  surely  haunted  the 
memory  of  Spenser.  And  Spenser  made  a  "lovely 
lay,"  not  lost  but  still  not  salient  among  the  profuse 
beauties  of  his  inexhaustible  treasuries  of  poetry;  and 
Herrick  made  a  final  little  quatrain,  far  less  grand  in 
manner,  and  yet  so  much  more  near  perfection  that 
as  one  listens  to  his  lines  one  feels  them  ultimate,  in 
their   exquisite   harmony   of   spontaneity   and   intelli- 


152   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

gence.  The  old  comparison  recurs  to  mind.  Spenser's 
verses  are  like  a  section  of  some  vigorous  tree,  pushing 
its  crest  skyward;  Herrick's  are  like  an  exquisite 
flower,  blooming  on  some  little  branch  so  far  from 
the  centre  of  its  life  that  its  own  perfection  seems 
its  whole  excuse  for  being.  Here  growth  can  go  no 
further.  The  true  course  of  life  lies  elsewhere.  Yet 
there  are  moments  when  one  feels  content  with  the 
flower  alone,  caring  for  the  trunk  which  bore  it  only 
because  of  this  final,  fleeting  burden  of  beauty. 

There  is  no  such  decadence  here  as  we  traced  in 
the  drama.  When  Spenser  wrote,  that  more  popular 
kind  of  poetry  was  in  the  full  flush  of  its  beginning; 
when  Herrick's  "Hesperides"  was  published,  the  faint 
copies  of  Shirley  had  already  been  suppressed  for  the 
six  years  which  had  followed  the  closing  of  the  thea- 
tres. And,  in  spite  of  the  gross  eroticism  and  other 
extravagance  which  intruded  themselves  into  lyric 
poetry,  too,  when  the  drama  was  so  swiftly  declining, 
the  lyrics  never  sunk  into  a  state  of  repellent  decay. 
But  by  Herrick's  time  they  had  lost  their  old  buoyant 
integrity  of  lyric  impulse,  which  had  made  the  elder 
poets  seem  first  brethren  and  only  secondarily  individ- 
uals. Soon  came  divergence;  this  or  that  distinct 
tendency  or  master  began  to  separate  the  younger 
poets  into  groups,  not  unfriendly  or  mutually  distrust- 
ful, but  no  longer  integral  with  one  another.  Of  the 
masters  three  clearly  surpassed  the  rest — Spenser,  with 
his  Italianate  grace ;  Jonson,  with  his  assimilated  classi- 


POETRY  153 

cism;  and  Donne,  with  that  intense  individuality  of 
which  Carew  could  write : 

The  Muses  Garden,  with  pedantic  weeds 
O'erspread,  was  purged  by  thee;  the  lazy  seeds 
Of  servile  Imitation  thrown  away 
And  fresh  Invention  planted 

Then  came  men  of  lesser  range,  of  more  narrow  scope, 
each  and  all  impelled  chiefly  by  the  influence  which 
flowed  from  one  or  another  of  the  masters.  And  so, 
when  we  think  of  Spenser  and  of  Campion,  in  the 
elder  days,  we  think  of  them  first  together  and  then 
apart.  But  when  we  think  of  the  Spenserian  Browne, 
for  example,  and  of  Vaughan  with  his  metaphysical 
ecstasies,  and  of  Herrick,  loyal  to  the  Tribe  of  Ben, 
we  think  of  them  first  apart  and  then  together. 

We  have  hardly  mentioned  the  one  great  poet  who 
was  growing  toward  his  maturity  in  these  disintegrant 
times.  For  our  purposes  Milton  is  so  important  that 
we  must  by  and  by  consider  him  alone.  We  have 
touched  now  on  the  poetical  surroundings  of  his  early 
days.  Before  we  come  to  him  we  must  touch  on  other 
surroundings  too. 

But  meanwhile  we  must  not  forget  the  chief  purpose 
which  brings  us  together;  this  is  to  trace,  if  we  may, 
those  changes  in  the  national  temper  of  England  which 
made  it,  in  Dryden's  time,  so  different  from  what  it 
was  when  the  century  began,  and  when  English  liter- 
ature was  dominated  by  Shakspere.     We  have  ren- 


154   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

dered  ourselves,  accordingly,  some  account  of  what 
Elizabethan  temper  was,  in  all  the  integrity  of  its 
spontaneous,  enthusiastic,  versatile,  literary  experi- 
ment. Then  we  have  considered  the  course  of  the 
drama,  first  disintegrant,  later  decadent  to  the  point 
of  extinction — bespeaking,  above  all  things  else,  a  loss 
of  the  old  national  integrity,  a  growth  apart  of  some 
special  race  of  play-goers,  still  delighting  in  traces  of 
the  elder  splendors,  but  less  and  less  able  to  discern 
the  difference  between  stars  and  spangles.  Next  we 
have  been  considering  the  course  which  lyric  poetry 
took  the  while;  and,  for  all  the  truth  and  beauty 
which  resided  to  the  end  in  English  lyrics,  we  found 
without  precise  decadence  trace  after  trace  of  just 
such  disintegration  as  preceded  the  decadence  of  the 
drama.  The  only  truly  new  note  which  we  have  yet 
detected  is  in  itself  a  widely,  remotely  specialized  one, 
such  as  inspired  the  ecstatic  solitude  of  Vaughan's 
religious  utterances.  This  very  individual  solitude  of 
the  later  poets  implies  the  truth  we  should  now  keep 
most  clearly  in  mind.  In  the  days  of  King  James 
and  of  King  Charles,  both  lyric  and  dramatic  poetry 
indicate  how  the  national  temper  of  England  was  no 
longer  so  deeply  at  one  that  any  single  poetic  expres- 
sion could  summarize  it  at  all ;  and  furthermore,  how 
the  robustness  of  the  elder  time  had  faded  out  of 
literature.  Our  next  business  must  be  to  inquire  how 
that  national  temper  revealed  itself,  the  while,  in  the 
less  deliberately  artistic  vehicle  of  prose. 


VI 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PROSE 

THE   BIBLE   AND   BACON 

Perhaps  inevitably,  the  abundance  of  material 
lately  before  us  has  a  little  obscured  the  purpose  we 
are  trying  to  follow.  Our  object  is  to  trace,  so  far 
as  we  may,  the  processes  by  which  the  national  temper 
of  England  changed  during  the  seventeenth  century, 
when  its  literature  passed  from  the  period  of  Shak- 
spere  to  that  of  Dryden.  And  these  processes  we  must, 
of  course,  consider  chiefly  as  they  reveal  themselves 
in  literature.  Now,  literature  we  agreed  to  define  as 
the  lasting  expression  in  words  of  the  meaning  of  life. 
For  us,  accordingly,  seventeenth  century  literature  in- 
cludes not  the  whole  production  of  the  period,  but 
only  such  parts  of  that  production  as  the  unconscious, 
instinctive  selection  of  posterity  has  found  memorable. 
That  quality  of  duration,  of  lastingness,  is  essential 
to  such  matter  as  we  have  agreed  to  consider  together. 

Nor  is  this  unreasonable.  As  truly  as  one  who 
looks  at  a  landscape  must  take  his  stand  in  some  one 
spot,  from  whence  his  surroundings  fall  into  a  per- 
spective true  nowhere  else,  so,  I  think,  a  student  of 
human  affairs,  who  strives  to  see  them  in  their  mutual 

155 


156   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

relations,  must  choose  the  point  of  view  from  which 
he  would  regard  them.  Rather,  perhaps,  he  must 
frankly  recognize  the  point  of  view  where  circum- 
stances beyond  his  power  place  him.  We  are  living, 
for  example,  in  the  first  years  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, and  at  this  moment  we  are  concerning  ourselves 
with  men  who  were  alive,  and  with  forces  which  were 
at  work,  three  hundred  years  ago.  So  placed,  there 
is  before  us  a  pretty  clear  alternative.  Either  we  must 
painfully  and  studiously  try  to  sweep  back  the  tide 
of  time  until  we  can  faintly  revive  some  ghostly  image 
of  Elizabethan  days,  or  else,  admitting  where  and 
what  we  are,  we  must  ask  ourselves  how  these  elder 
days  appear  to  us,  here  and  now,  in  the  perspective 
of  the  centuries. 

The  whole  truth  no  man  can  ever  know.  Aspects 
of  truth  all  men  can  see  who  will  plant  their  feet  and 
use  their  eyes.  Of  which  aspects,  when  we  turn  our 
eyes  to  the  past,  none  seem  more  certain  than  the 
names  and  the  records  which  the  present  keeps  in  mind 
— the  eminences  which  grow  the  more  distinct  for  their 
very  distance.  What  men  have  not  forgotten  is  mem- 
orable just  because  it  is  remembered. 

Thus  glancing  back  at  the  elder  days,  before  our 
closer  scrutiny  should  begin,  we  could  see,  perhaps 
more  clearly  than  from  any  lesser  distance  of  time, 
some  features  of  that  Elizabethan  England  from  which 
have  sprung  the  national  tempers  both  of  England  and 
of  our  distinct  America.     In  the  days  of  Queen  Eliza- 


PROSE  157 

beth,  the  national  life  of  England  had  an  integrity  all 
its  own ;  Elizabethan  literature  had  a  freshness  a  spon- 
taneity, an  enthusiasm  which  expressed  itself  chiefly  in 
eagerness  for  versatile  experiment.  The  bonds  of  the 
past  had  been  weakened  or  broken;  the  bonds  of  the 
future  were  still  unforged.  And  literature,  surging 
with  the  power  of  aspiring,  unchecked  imagination, 
burst  forth  into  a  poetry  which  seems  undying.  The 
lyric  achievement  of  those  days  was  surpassed  only  by 
the  dramatic ;  and  both  lyric  poetry  and  dramatic  were 
so  abundant  that,  when  we  came  to  render  ourselves 
account  of  them  in  detail,  their  very  abundance  proved 
momentarily  confusing. 

This  abundance  persisted  when  we  asked  ourselves 
next  what  course  this  poetry  took  in  either  way. 
Lyric  poetry  and  dramatic  alike  we  had  seen  to  begin 
with  spontaneous,  enthusiastic,  versatile  experiment. 
We  chose  to  consider  each  apart.  So,  considering  the 
drama,  in  its  own  transitory  moment  the  most  charac- 
teristic expression  of  the  national  integrity  of  Eliza- 
bethan England,  we  saw  how  its  eager  experiments 
resulted  in  the  various  manners  which  inventive  men 
developed  each  for  himself,  and  which  Shakspere 
flexibly  followed.  We  saw  how  swiftly  the  conscious- 
ness of  this  achievement  imposed  on  the  later  men  a 
sense  of  tradition  which  checked  the  freedom  of  ro- 
mantic play-writing,  and  made  it  finally  obedient  to 
freshly  accepted  conventions  of  its  own.  Meanwhile, 
we  saw  how  corruption  of  temper  invaded  the  stage, 


158   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

how  fastidiousness  and  excess  replaced  the  old  spon- 
taneous ease  and  freedom.  And  so  came  the  swift 
decline.  Imaginative  outburst  came  first;  then  came 
a  little  while  when  the  surging  force  of  imagination 
mingled  nobly  and  vitally  with  the  freshly  developed 
sense  of  what  could  be  achieved ;  finally  came  the 
time  when  a  crushing  sense  of  what  had  been  achieved 
checked  and  repressed  the  force  of  the  imaginative  out- 
burst. And  as  the  vigor,  the  health  of  the  olden  time 
declined,  we  could  feel,  half  insensibly,  how  the  frag- 
ment of  disintegrating  England  to  which  the  decadent 
stage  still  appealed  was  strangely  without  the  whole- 
some, buoyant  integrity  of  the  days  which  were  so 
lately  past.  The  men  who  welcomed  Shirley  were 
of  another  stripe  than  their  fathers,  who  had  delighted 
in  the  full  strength  of  Shakspere. 

Turning  next  to  lyric  poetry,  we  found  its  course 
similar,  but  different.  Like  the  drama,  it  had  its 
period  of  spontaneous,  enthusiastic,  versatile  Eliza- 
bethan integrity.  Like  the  drama,  it  developed  its 
masters  and  their  manners :  Spenser  and  Jonson  and 
Donne.  As  was  the  case  with  the  drama,  the  very 
eminence  of  these  masters  imposed  on  later  men  the 
conventions,  the  traditions  of  achievements  and  man- 
nerisms not  instinctively  or  freely  their  own.  So 
came  disintegration  and  much  trace  of  fastidious  ex- 
cess. A  sense  of  limit,  too,  hung  about  the  later  men. 
Each  one,  we  could  feel,  addressed  himself,  not,  like 
the  elder  poets,  to  all  who  might  listen,  but  only  to 


PROSE  159 

such  as  were  disposed  to  respond.  Popularity,  no 
doubt,  is  rarely  the  lot  of  any  merely  lyric  utterance. 
To  love  poetry  other  than  dramatic,  indeed,  means 
that  one  has  a  sensitiveness  to  beauty  akin  to  what 
we  call  an  ear  for  music.  From  its  very  nature, 
accordingly,  poetry  other  than  dramatic  could  hardly 
fall  into  the  kind  of  corrupt  decadence  which  overtook 
the  drama.  So  the  English  lyric  followed  the  course 
of  the  drama  only  to  the  point  of  a  disintegration 
where  various  kinds  of  poetry  stood  each  clearly  apart 
from  the  rest — where  poetry,  in  every  aspect,  was  a 
slighter  thing,  far  less  broadly  national  than  any  poetry 
of  Elizabeth's  time.  To  this  point,  accordingly,  the 
course  of  dramatic  poetry  and  of  lyric  proved  parallel. 
Both  bespoke,  so  far  as  literature  could,  a  deep  disinte- 
gration of  national  temper — a  growing  self-conscious- 
ness, now  fastidious  concerning  detail,  again  quickened 
only  by  excess  of  unwholesome  stimulant,  again  still 
contentedly  submitting  to  the  numbness  of  convention. 
Whatever  else,  the  world  in  which  we  left  all  poetry 
alike  had  outgrown  the  ardent  youthful  integrity  of 
the  world  in  which  we  first  found  it. 

Of  chronology,  meanwhile,  we  were  perforce  care- 
less. And  even  now  it  is  enough  to  recall  that  our 
first  survey  of  literature  attempted  to  discern  the 
national  temper  of  England  as  there  revealed,  in  1600; 
that  our  survey  of  the  drama  took  it  from  that  time 
to  the  closing  of  the  theatres,  in  1642;  and  that  Her- 
rick's   "Hesperides,"   the   last   work   of   lyric   poetry 


i6o   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

which  we  have  considered,  was  published  in  1648. 
From  Queen  Ehzabeth's  time  these  swift  journeys 
took  us  to  the  verge  of  the  Commonwealth — from  an 
England  whence  both  America  and  modern  England 
have  sprung  to  one  from  which  the  main  streams  of 
our  trans-Atlantic  national  life  had  already  begun  to 
diverge.  It  is  on  this  same  period — broadly  speaking, 
the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century — that  we  shall 
dwell  now,  as  we  consider  the  tendencies  of  English 
prose. 

Up  to  1600,  we  have  seen,  the  course  of  English 
prose  had  been  parallel  with  that  of  poetry,  but  far 
less  conspicuous.  In  general,  writers  of  prose  were 
stirred,  at  first,  by  no  artistic  impulse.  Broadly  speak- 
ing, their  purpose  was  frankly  to  translate  into  terms 
which  should  be  understood  matter  which,  untrans- 
lated, would  remain  obscure.  By  a  little  stretch  of 
meaning  that  statement  may  be  made  to  cover  not 
only  their  avowed  translations  from  foreign  tongues 
into  a  vernacular  English  subtly  ennobled  by  memories 
of  the  grand  rhythm  of  Latin,  but  also  such  exposi- 
tory narrative  as  one  finds  in  the  chronicles,  in  the 
records  of  voyages  and  adventures,  or  even  in  the 
glowing  fervor  of  Foxe's  "Book  of  Martyrs."  Of 
all  the  Elizabethan  prose  which  we  recalled,  only  one 
considerable  volume  had  a  really  original  character; 
this  was  Hooker's  "Ecclesiastical  Polity,"  a  work  so 
nobly  conceived  and  so  gently  written  as  to  raise  con- 
troversy for  once  to  literary  eminence.     Elizabethan 


PROSE  i6i 

prose,  in  brief,  was  mostly  a  thing  of  daily  use,  beau- 
tiful and  noble  in  occasional  form  only  because  of 
that  marvellous  Elizabethan  integrity  which  stamped 
every  expression  of  the  time  with  its  buoyant  spirit. 

This  prose,  like  the  verse  which  surged  above  it, 
was  experimental,  too.  Englishmen  had  not  yet  dis- 
covered what  their  language  could  be  made  to  com- 
pass. The  poets  proved  it  capable  of  immortal  beau- 
ties. The  makers  of  prose,  meanwhile,  proved  it  capa- 
ble of  widely  various  use.  Yet,  on  the  whole,  they 
hardly  attempted  to  use  it  for  purely  literary  purpose. 
Or  rather,  when  they  did  so,  it  was  with  such  fantastic 
excess  of  youthful  ingenuity  as  made  the  novels  of 
Lily  first  popular  and  soon,  when  their  brief  popu- 
larity had  faded,  inexhaustibly  tedious.  So  far  as 
pure  literature  goes,  this  elder  time  has  made  no  per- 
manent prose  record.  The  prose  which  has  survived 
from  that  period  has  survived  because  of  the  fervid, 
unconscious  beauties  which,  in  those  full  Elizabethan 
days,  proved  sometimes  inseparable  from  human  ex- 
pression, even  though  the  conscious  purpose  of  that 
expression  were  merely  to  make  something  of  transi- 
tory usefulness.  The  moment  Lily  attempted  to  use 
prose  as  a  vehicle  of  fine  art,  he  made  only  ingeniously 
pretty  experiments,  the  grace  of  whose  affecta- 
tions has  long  withered  away.  Of  all  this  elder  prose, 
meanwhile,  we  may  assert,  even  more  confidently  than 
we  asserted  of  the  elder  poetry,  that  it  leaves  in  mem- 
ory an  impression  of  fervid  integrity,  not  of  individ- 


162   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

ual  achievement.  Translations,  chronicles,  records  of 
adventure,  novels  and  chap-books,  controversies,  what- 
ever else,  group  themselves  rather  together  than  apart. 
English  prose,  to  the  point  where  we  left  it,  had  never 
yet  risen  to  anything  like  the  eminence  which  lyric 
poetry  had  attained  in  the  work  of  Spenser,  or  which 
had  already  crowned  dramatic  poetry  with  the  superb 
fragments  of  Marlowe  and  with  the  earlier  master- 
pieces of  Shakspere. 

So,  even  if  the  course  of  prose  in  the  coming  time 
— the  time  which  saw  the  decadence  of  the  drama 
and  the  disintegration  of  lyric  poetry — had  proved 
precisely  parallel  with  these,  its  decline  would  have 
been  far  less  salient :  a  great  fall  must  be  from  some 
great  height.  In  point  of  fact,  however,  though  some- 
thing happened  to  English  prose  which  may  be  held 
analogous  to  the  fortunes  of  English  poetry,  there  is 
room  for  question  as  to  whether  the  course  of  prose 
literature  was  such  as  can  fairly  be  brought  within 
the  same  formula.  Though  sound  critics  have  some- 
times called  the  tendency  of  seventeenth-century  prose 
decadent,  there  seems  equal  ground  for  belief  that  as 
poetry  disintegrated  and  declined,  prose,  under  the 
same  influences  tended  to  develop  new  power. 

The  actual  production  of  English  prose  between 
1600  and  1650  was  more  than  abundant.  On  the 
whole,  however,  the  general  purpose  which  underlay 
it  remained  so  little  altered  from  the  purpose  which 
underlay  Elizabethan  prose  itself  that  this  later  prose 


PROSE  163 

is  mostly  of  only  historical  interest.  For  its  own  sake, 
little  of  it  would  now  be  remembered. 

This  is  surely  true  of  the  prose  left  us  by  the  two 
men  who,  after  Spenser,  most  deeply  stamped  their 
impress  on  English  poetry.  The  style  of  the  jottings 
from  Ben  Jonson's  note-books  which  were  posthu- 
mously published  shows  just  such  mingled  mastery  of 
classical  spirit  and  vernacular  English  as  made  his 
dramas  bewildering  and  his  lyrics  excellent.  Here, 
for  example,  is  his  well-known  comment  on  Shakspere : 

"I  remember,  the  players  have  often  mentioned  it 
as  an  honour  to  Shakespeare,  that  in  his  writing  (what- 
soever he  penned)  he  never  blotted  out  a  line.  My 
answer  hath  been.  Would  he  had  blotted  a  thousand. 
Which  they  thought  a  malevolent  speech.  I  had  not 
told  posterity  this,  but  for  their  ignorance,  who  chose 
that  circumstance  to  commend  their  friend  by,  wherein 
he  most  faulted ;  .  .  .  for  I  loved  the  man,  and 
do  honour  his  memory,  on  this  side  idolatry,  as  much 
as  any.  He  was  (indeed)  honest,  and  of  an  open  and 
free  nature;  had  an  excellent  phantasy,  brave  notions, 
and  gentle  expressions;  wherein  he  flowed  with  that 
facility,  that  sometimes  it  was  necessary  he  should  be 
stopped.  SiMamminandus  erat,  as  Augustus  said  of 
Haterius.  His  wit  was  in  his  own  power;  would  the 
rule  of  it  had  been  so  too." 

But  though  Jonson's  mastery  made  him  a  prose 
writer  of  positive  merit,  he  used  his  prose  disdain- 
fully.   As  an  artist,  as  a  m.aster,  he  kept  himself,  after 


i64   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

the  fashion  of  his  time,  a  poet;  and  it  was  as  a  poet 
that  he  deeply  influenced  the  style  of  his  disciples. 

So  Donne,  in  his  graver  days,  wrote  sundry  works 
of  controversial  prose,  and  left  us  nearly  two  hundred 
sermons;  but  in  spite  of  the  fervor  which  now  and 
again  glows  beneath  the  massive  lines,  and  reveals  the 
same  intensity  of  combined  intellect  and  emotion  which 
gives  individuality  to  his  poetry,  all  his  prose  has 
long  since  sunk  beneath  the  horizon  of  time.  It  is 
memorable,  perhaps,  in  the  history  of  controversy  and 
of  English  religion ;  it  does  not  linger  in  literature. 
Witness  any  characteristic  bit  of  it,  such  as  this : 

"And  let  him  that  is  subject  to  these  smaller  sins 
remember,  that  as  a  spider  builds  always  where  he 
knows  there  is  the  most  access  and  haunt  of  flies,  so 
the  devil  that  hath  cast  these  light  cobwebs  into  thy 
heart,  knows  that  that  heart  is  made  of  vanities  and 
levities;  and  he  that  gathers  into  his  treasure  what- 
soever thou  wastest  out  of  thine,  how  negligent  soever 
thou  be,  he  keeps  thy  reckoning  exactly,  and  will  pro- 
duce against  thee  at  last  as  many  lascivious  glances 
as  shall  make  up  an  adultery,  as  many  covetous  wishes 
as  shall  make  up  a  robbery,  as  many  angry  words 
as  shall  make  up  a  murder ;  and  thou  shalt  have  dropped 
and  crumbled  away  thy  soul,  with  as  much  irrecover- 
ableness  as  if  thou  hadst  poured  it  out  all  at  once; 
and  thy  merry  sins,  thy  laughing  sins,  shall  grow  to 
be  crying  sins,  even  in  the  ears  of  God ;  and  though 
thou  drown  thy  soul  here,  drop  after  drop,  it  shall  not 


PROSE  165 

burn  spark  after  spark,  but  have  all  the  fire,  and  all  at 
once,  and  all  eternally,  in  one  entire  and  intense 
torment." 

Sound  preaching,  if  you  like,  this  is  not  an  example 
of  anything  like  memorable  literary  art.  A  similar 
impression  will  result  from  a  glance  at  the  most  con- 
venient collection  of  seventeenth  century  English  prose 
now  generally  accessible — at  one  or  two  of  the  volumes 
with  which  Craik  so  intelligently  supplemented  Ward's 
"English  Poets."  It  is  not  so  much  that  the  men 
whom  he  has  selected  have  been  quite  forgotten  as 
that,  on  the  whole,  they  are  remarkable  for  other 
things  than  this  prose  for  which  he  has  momentarily 
recalled  them  to  memory.  Or  if  this  prose  writing 
be  the  real  reason  why  they  still  linger  mistily  in  the 
sunlight,  it  has  proved  thus  memorable  only  by 
chance.  They  wrote,  no  doubt,  in  a  manner  different 
from  that  of  their  Elizabethan  forerunners;  but  they 
agreed  with  them  in  using  the  vehicle  of  prose  not 
for  literary  or  artistic  purpose,  but  for  purposes  of 
instruction,  of  information,  of  argument.  And  if  their 
writings  have  in  some  degree  survived,  it  is  because, 
despite  their  purposes,  they  used  this  growing  English 
not  only  disdainfully,  but  with  a  wildly  careless  power 
of  occasional  beauty. 

As  was  the  case  earlier,  there  is  one  clear  exception 
to  this  last  generalization.  Euphuism,  and  the  like, 
we  saw  to  be  the  single  memorable  attempt  of  the 
elder  time  to  use  prose  for  primarily  artistic  purpose. 


i66   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

It  proved  popular,  it  had  deep  influence,  and  it  with- 
ered Hke  some  short-lived  flower.  In  the  seventeenth 
century,  or  at  least  in  the  days  of  King  James  and 
King  Charles,  there  was  no  writer  of  literary  prose 
either  so  salient  or  so  popular  as  Lily;  but  there  de- 
clared itself  one  variety  of  deliberately  literary  prose, 
practised  by  a  great  number  of  men.  which  finally  had 
a  deep  and  lasting  effect  on  English  literature. 

This  was  the  Character-Writing,  which  persisted, 
in  some  degree,  throughout  the  century.  It  has  not 
yet  been  minutely  studied.  Its  origin,  at  least  in  its 
fully  developed  form,  is  commonly  held  to  be  the 
"Characters"  of  Theophratus,  which  became  accessible 
shortly  after  1600;  the  most  familiar  and  excellent 
example  of  it  in  modern  literature  is  the  "Caracteres" 
of  the  French  La  Bruyere,  which  did  not  appear  till 
long  after  this  kind  of  writing  had  become  traditional 
in  England,  though  England  never  produced  an  ex- 
ample of  it  so  highly  finished  as  his.  The  course  of 
Character-Writing  in  England  during  the  first  half 
of  the  seventeenth  century  may  be  broadly  indicated 
l)y  the  names  of  Hall,  Overbury,  Earle,  George  Her- 
bert and  Fuller. 

The  fact  that  Hall  was  earlier  and  better  known 
as  a  maker  of  formal  and  conventional  satire  throws 
some  light  on  the  true  nature  of  English  Character- 
Writing.  Elizabethan  satire,  we  have  seen,  was  a  para- 
doxical attempt  to  express  the  experience  of  a  renascent 
world  in  the  terms  of  a  decadent  one.      Its   formal 


PROSE  167 

inspiration,  its  style,  and  its  temper  came  chiefly 
from  Juvenal  and  Martial;  yet  the  facts  with  which 
it  dealt  were  those  of  Elizabethan  England — the 
youthful  world  from  which  both  America  and  the 
British  Empire  of  to-day  may  trace  their  origin. 
The  obvious  discordance  of  its  vehicle  and  its  sub- 
stance, accordingly,  was  perhaps  the  chief  reason  why 
it  never  flourished  so  strongly  as  to  be  conspicuous 
in  the  perspective  of  three  centuries.  Of  Elizabethan 
satirists.  Hall  was  among  the  most  noteworthy.  Some 
ten  years  after  his  satires  were  published  came  his 
"Characters  of  Virtues  and  Vices,"  returning  to  the 
same  motive  in  that  vehicle  of  prose,  of  which  the 
mood  is  always  apparently  contemporary.  His 
characters  are  conventional,  to  be  sure;  but  like  some 
more  crude  Elizabethan  ones  which  preceded  them, 
they  have  a  rough  aspect  of  being  conventionalized 
from  life  rather  than  vitalized  from  convention.  And 
something  similar  appears  in  the  "Characters"  of  Sir 
Thomas  Overbury  and  in  the  "Microcosmography" 
of  Earle.  George  Herbert's  "Priest  to  the  Temple" 
carries  on  the  movement,  in  a  deeply  characteristic 
setting  forth  of  what,  with  his  earnest  Anglicanism,  he 
conceived  to  be  the  ideal  of  the  Christian  Ministry; 
and  Fuller's  "Holy  and  Profane  State"  expresses  his 
conception  of  those  types  of  conduct  which  really  lead 
men  heavenward  or  toward  the  depths. 

There  is  development  here,  of  a  kind  on  which  we 
well  might  linger,  both  for  its  own  sake  and  for  the 


i68   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

future  which  was  before  it.  There  can  be  no  question 
that  from  these  conventional  characters  of  seventeenth- 
century  observation  and  abstraction  came  the  distinctly 
individual  characters  which  have  done  so  much  to 
immortalize  the  essays  of  the  eighteenth  century;  nor 
yet  that  the  vital  characters  of  eighteenth  century 
essays  were  the  direct  forerunners  of  that  finally  vivid 
characterization  which  pervades  the  great  period  of 
English  fiction.  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  sprang  from 
some  abstract  country  gentleman  of  the  elder  charac- 
ter-writing; and  from  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  sprang 
in  turn  Parson  Adams  and  Colonel  Newcome.  But 
we  wander  afield.  By  themselves  these  elder  charac- 
ter-writings, the  sole  memorable  phase  of  literary  prose 
during  the  early  seventeenth  century,  never  rose  to 
positive  eminence.  They  remain  admirably  noteworthy 
chiefly  because  they  mark  the  course  which  English 
literature  took  on  its  way  from  the  unreal  conventions 
of  Elizabethan  satire  to  the  crescent  vitality  of  Addi- 
son's essays.  And,  as  we  reminded  ourselves  when 
we  began  the  considerations  now  before  us,  our  direct 
concern  is  with  such  monuments  of  literature  as  have 
actually  survived. 

The  same  half  century  which  produced  this  minor 
prose,  however,  produced,  as  we  have  seen,  dramatic 
poetry,  and  lyric,  too,  of  lasting  excellence.  This 
poetry,  with  the  minor  prose,  should  now  be  tolerably 
distinct  in  our  minds.  Thus  considered,  it  should 
serve  us  a  background  which  should  help  define  our 


PROSE  169 

impression  of  five  permanent  prose  works,  widely 
different  in  character,  which  enriched  Enghsh  hterature 
during  these  very  years :  the  Authorized  Version  of 
the  Bible,  the  works  of  Bacon,  Sir  Walter  Ralegh's 
"History  of  the  World,"  Burton's  "Anatomy  of  Mel- 
ancholy," and  the  earlier  writings  of  Sir  Thomas 
Browne.  On  these  five  we  must  now  dwell,  a  little 
while,  in  turn. 

The  history  of  English  religion  has  given  the  Bible 
of  161 1  so  eminently  sacred  a  character  that  long  ago 
its  very  syllables  had  acquired  a  peculiar  holiness. 
They  have  had  a  spiritual  efficacy,  too,  such  as  might 
well  give  color  to  the  faith  of  these  simple  believers 
who  have  grown,  from  time  to  time,  to  believe  that 
the  Englished  Word  of  God  resulted  from  literally 
verbal  inspiration.  Biblical  phrases  have  accordingly 
passed  with  language  into  the  subconscious  depths  of 
our  national  being  until  it  is  less  than  the  truth  to 
assert  that  no  one  can  earnestly  think  in  English  to- 
day without,  even  though  all  unknowing,  an  instinctive 
faith  that  absolute  moral  right  is  embodied  in  phrase 
after  phrase  of  English  Scripture.  These  phrases,  fur- 
thermore, have  been  so  uninterruptedly  familiar  to 
all  who  speak  and  think  and  write  our  language  that, 
quite  apart  from  their  sacredness,  they  have  had  on 
the  utterances  of  the  generations  who  have  known 
them  far  more  deep  influence  than  any  other  words 
whatsoever.  On  all  this  aspect  of  the  Bible  we  can- 
not touch  now.     Our  inquiry  concerns  only  its  place 


I70   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

in  English  literature;  and  of  that  place  there  can  be 
no  reasonable  question.  It  crowns  a  period  of  experi- 
mental translations,  mostly  direct  and  made  by  indi- 
vidual men,  with  a  work  of  slowly  developed,  com- 
posite translation  which  may  fairly  be  termed  the 
greatest  translation  in  the  world. 

Translation,  we  have  seen  already,  is  a  term  which 
may  be  stretched  to  include  almost  all  the  achievements 
of  Elizabethan  literature.  The  poets  and  the  drama- 
tists, as  well  as  the  men  who  avowedly  rendered  into 
English  works  from  foreign  tongues,  were  chiefly  con- 
cerned with  phrasing  in  new  ways  thoughts  and  emo- 
tions, alive  with  interest  and  beauty,  which  they  had 
discovered  in  a  form  less  satisfactory  than  that  in 
which  they  left  them.  Originality,  invention  in  the 
modern  sense,  an  Elizabethan  never  dreamed  of.  He 
took  what  material  he  found  at  hand,  and  dealt 
with  it  as  he  pleased,  eager  chiefly  to  make  it,  in 
new  guise,  more  intelligible,  more  alluring,  more 
effective.  In  general,  of  course,  the  poets  and  the 
dramatists  and  the  translators,  from  classical  languages 
or  from  modern,  worked  either  each  by  himself  or  in 
careless  collaboration.  In  general,  all  rendered  the 
material  with  which  they  dealt  into  the  terms  of  the 
moment.  So,  when  the  moment  passed,  those  terms 
became  magnificently  pristine — no  longer,  what  they 
had  been,  stirring  examples  of  the  language  actually 
used  by  living  men. 

The  diuturnity  of  English  Scripture  is  partly,  no 


PROSE  171 

doubt,  a  matter  of  its  reverend  holiness  in  the  eyes  of 
the  generations ;  partly,  too,  a  matter  of  more  cold,  dog- 
matic teaching;  but,  in  no  small  degree,  it  is  due  to  the 
nature  of  the  terms  in  which  that  masterpiece  of  trans- 
lation was  finally  phrased.  From  the  earliest  times 
when  Sacred  Writ  was  first  rendered  into  English, 
the  men  who  attempted  the  task  were  familiar  with 
Scripture  chiefly,  if  not  only,  in  its  Latin  form;  and 
the  Latinized  Scripture  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
whatever  its  merits  as  a  translation  from  Hebrew  and 
Greek,  possesses  superb  liturgical  rhythm.  Open  it 
anywhere,  read  aloud  a  few  verses,  and  you  will  feel 
for  yourselves  that  marvellous  surge  and  cadence  of 
sound  which  has  echoed,  since  the  days  of  the  Fathers, 
through  the  domes  and  arches  of  Christian  sanctuaries. 
Something  of  this  cosmic  music  could  not  but  haunt 
the  memories  of  those  who  strove  to  phrase  its  burden 
in  terms  which  should  once  more  be  intelligible,  as 
well  as  stirring,  to  simple  listeners.  This  rhythm 
alone  would  have  raised  English  Scripture  to  a  gran- 
deur above  the  level  of  this  world,  whose  daily  phrase 
falls  into  the  rhythm  not  of  the  ages,  but  of  transitory 
time. 

Again,  the  power  of  our  Scriptural  language  is 
not  only  a  question  of  its  noble  rhythm ;  it  is  due 
almost  as  much  to  the  purpose  which  possessed  all 
the  generations  of  translators,  that  the  Word  of  God 
should  be  accessible  to  all  who  would  hearken.  Thus, 
half  unwittingly,  the  English  translators,  generation 


172   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

after  generation,  strove  to  render  the  divine  accents 
of  the  Church  into  words  which  should  instantly  touch 
the  heads  and  the  hearts  of  English-speaking  humanity. 

Among  the  elder  translators  animated  by  this  pur- 
pose, one  is  beginning  to  seem  pre-eminent.  In  the 
personality  of  Tyndale,  as  the  records  of  his  life 
reveal  him,  there  was  something  which  marked  him, 
beyond  other  men,  as  the  greatest  master  of  this 
noble  double  purpose.  In  his  own  avowed  translations 
one  feels,  again  and  again,  not  only  the  rhythm  of 
the  centuries,  not  only  the  simple  language  of  Eng- 
lish mankind,  but  the  glow,  too,  of  such  personal 
fervor  as  inspires  the  more  conscious  utterances  of 
great  individual  poets.  If  one  might  dare  general- 
ize, one  might  venture  to  guess  that,  so  far  as  the 
secret  of  English  Scripture  can  be  analyzed,  it  may 
be  traced  to  these  three  sources :  the  simple  funda- 
mental dialect  which  all  who  speak  our  language 
can  understand;  the  glorious  liturgical  rhythm  of  the 
Latin  Church,  and  the  individual  fervor  of  William 
Tyndale. 

Tyndale  they  burned  for  a  heretic  in  King  Henry's 
time,  when  Wyatt  and  Surrey  were  beginning  to  prune 
into  lyric  grace  the  wild  beauties  of  elder  English. 
And  then  came  the  days  of  King  Edward  VI.,  and 
of  Queen  Mary,  and  the  great  reign  of  Elizabeth. 
These  very  names  are  enough  to  remind  us  of  the 
religious  turmoil  and  strife,  of  the  clashing  creeds  and 
theologies,  saintlinesses  and  priestcrafts,  through  which 


PROSE  173 

England  struggled  from  the  past  toward  the  future. 
Amid  these  passionate  controversies,  various  versions 
of  EngHsh  Scripture  wcve  made,  some  tending  con- 
sciously toward  that  Calvinism  which  by  and  by  was 
to  be  for  a  little  while  fleetingly  triumphant,  one 
deliberately  striving  to  express  in  English  the  tradi- 
tional orthodoxy  of  Rome.  Finally,  at  a  moment  when 
English  scholarship  was  more  sound  than  ever  before, 
and  when  English  churchmanship  was  for  a  little  while 
more  peaceful,  a  great  body  of  scholarly  Englishmen 
— their  names  now  mostly  forgotten — sat  them  down 
and  made  the  critical  revision  of  the  English  Bible 
which  has  been  accepted  by  all  Protestant  England 
since  it  finally  appeared  in   161 1. 

This  very  date  helps  us  fix  its  place  in  our  study. 
The  year  161 1,  we  may  recall,  was  the  year  before 
Webster  published  his  preface  to  the  "White  Devil," 
which  confessed  how  the  drama  was  submitting 
to  the  bonds  of  fresh  tradition.  Shakspere  was 
still  at  work;  Jonson,  Dekker,  Hey  wood,  Middleton, 
and  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  were  at  the  height  of 
their  power.  The  Spenserian  poets — Giles  Fletcher 
and  Browne — were  in  the  midst  of  their  work;  Chap- 
man had  just  completed  his  translation  of  the  "Iliad" ; 
the  lyric  influence  of  Jonson  and  of  Donne  was 
fresh  in  the  air.  Ralegh,  in  the  Tower,  had  almost 
finished  the  colossal  fragment  of  his  great  History; 
and  Bacon  was  preparing  to  publish  that  second 
edition  of  his   essays   which   added   so  much   to   the 


174   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

first  that  we  may  almost  consider  it  as  the  original. 
Queen  Elizabeth  was  dead,  but  the  spirit  in  English 
literature  which  we  call  Elizabethan  was  at  its  height. 
Virginia  was  just  founded;  New  England  was  just 
about  to  be.  These  were  the  surroundings  of  the  men 
who  gave  to  the  English  Bible  the  form  which  has  been 
found  final.  Their  language  had  been  mastered,  and 
shown  to  be  a  vehicle  of  widely  various  beauty. 
In  poetry,  dramatic  and  lyric  alike,  it  had  proceeded 
so  far  that  the  bonds  of  new  tradition — the  conscious- 
ness of  what  the  masters  had  achieved — were  begin- 
ning to  stiffen  about  it.  But  prose  was  still  free  to 
surge  on,  with  such  momentary  unconsciousness  of 
all  but  its  purpose  as  succeeds  an  age  of  experiment 
and  comes  before  an  age  where  the  result  of  free  ex- 
periment has  imposed  new  conventions. 

The  Bible,  no  doubt,  even  more  than  the  deliberate 
stanzas  of  Spenser,  was  writ  in  no  language.  As  we 
possess  it,  we  find  it  a  revision,  made  with  wonderfully 
sensitive  care  for  rhythm,  of  the  elder  versions  which 
had  been  growing  toward  this  culmination  almost 
from  the  days  of  Wickliffe.  What  marks  it  as  of  its 
own  time  is  the  utterly  natural  quality  of  its  immor- 
tal beauty.  In  its  own  way,  this  composite  outgrowth 
of  earnest  devout  purpose,  made  at  last  by  so  many 
collaborating  hands  that  one  cannot  even  guess  from 
whom  came  any  single  touch  of  final  loving  care  for 
word  or  rhythm,  may  be  held,  in  mere  literature,  the 
ultimate  achievement  of  English   prose.     Though  it 


PROSE  175 

be  quite  in  the  dialect  of  no  instant  ever  known  to 
men,  it  is  full  of  that  spirit  which  we  have  so  often 
tried  to  define  as  Elizabethan.  It  is  the  one  final 
expression,  in  our  prose,  of  such  mastery  as  results 
from  generations  of  experiment  and  precedes  genera- 
tions of  newly  deadening  tradition. 

If  you  would  feel  this  quality,  compare  any  passage 
from  the  Authorized  New  Testament  with  the  Revised 
Version  of  it  made  a  few  years  ago.  In  our  New  Eng- 
land, still  faintly  stirred  by  the  saintly  heresies  of  Chan- 
ning,  modern  divines  are  apt  to  prefer  these  more 
accurate  words  of  Victorian  scholarship.  They  are 
often  more  consonant  with  the  Higher  Criticism  than 
the  Authorized  Version  appears  to  be;  and  so,  per- 
haps, they  come  a  shade  nearer  what  the  temper  of 
this  passing  day  fancies  to  be  truth.  But  as  one  begins 
to  recognize  the  loss  of  beauty  which  jars  on  the  ear 
with  every  fresh  discord  of  that  modern  strain  for 
accuracy,  there  comes  a  crescent  sense  that,  though 
the  revisers  sought  earnestly  for  truth,  they  have 
strayed  from  the  deeper  truth  which  makes  the  words 
and  the  rhythm  of  the  elder  Scripture  seem  almost 
literally  divine. 

It  was  during  the  year  after  the  Authorized  Ver- 
sion was  published — during  the  year  1612,  in  which 
Webster  set  forth  his  "White  Devil"  and  in  which 
Shakspere  probably  ceased  writing  for  the  stage — 
that  the  second  edition  of  Bacon's  essays  appeared. 
The  first,  published  in  1597,  had  contained  only  ten 


176   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

essays;  this  swelled  the  number  to  thirty-eight.  It 
was  not  until  1625  that  the  final  edition  was  published, 
adding  twenty  more,  and  reducing  the  earlier  ones  to 
the  form  in  which  we  commonly  read  them.  Had 
they  never  proceeded  beyond  the  state  which  they  had 
reached  in  1612,  however,  they  would  still  have  re- 
mained Bacon's  principal  contribution  to  English  lit- 
erature. 

Without  a  line  of  them,  no  doubt,  his  name  would 
have  been  great.  His  professional  career  as  a  lawyer 
and  a  statesman  was  enough  to  assure  him  lasting 
eminence.  He  had  infirmities,  of  course,  which  tra- 
dition has  exaggerated;  and  the  close  of  his  public 
life  was  tragically  disgraceful.  But  you  have  only  to 
read  the  pages  in  which  Gardiner,  the  most  faithful 
and  scholarly  of  English  historians,  has  recorded 
Bacon's  legal  and  political  acts  and  utterances,  to  feel 
that  these  alone  would  have  justified  his  claim  to 
the  admiration  of  posterity.  If  Bacon  had  lived  com- 
pletely apart  from  the  world,  meanwhile,  his  writings 
as  a  philosopher — as  one  who  in  youth  took  all  knowl- 
edge to  be  his  province,  and  strove  unceasingly  to 
reduce  it  to  lawful  order — would,  by  themselves,  have 
won  him  impregnable  fame.  He  did  not,  as  he  had 
hoped  to  do,  lead  the  way  finally  from  the  confusion 
of  the  past  to  what  he  believed  might  be  the  certainties 
of  the  future,  but  he  pointed  the  way  in  which  those 
who  were  afterward  to  lead  must  set  their  faces.  Neg- 
lecting  all   this,   we   might   find,   in   a  less   familiar 


PROSE  177 

piece  of  his  writing,  good  reason  for  holding  him 
a  lasting  master,  even  though  he  had  left  no  other 
trace;  for  his  brief  "History  of  King  Henry  VH.," 
with  the  making  of  which  he  diverted  the  first  months 
of  his  disgrace,  is  an  almost  classical  model,  from 
amid  an  age  of  chronicles  and  legends  and  contro- 
versial mendacities,  of  what  calmly  critical  history 
ought  finally  to  be.  And  yet,  if  this,  too,  with  his 
public  life  and  his  philosophical  leadership,  had  never 
been,  or  had  been  lost  in  the  recesses  of  some  unre- 
corded past,  the  essays — even  in  the  form  which  they 
had  assumed  by  161 2 — would  have  secured  his  mem- 
ory as  a  man  of  letters.  Whatever  else,  they  remain 
what  they  were  from  the  moment  when  they  first  saw 
the  light — the  masterpieces  of  English  aphorism. 

Throughout  Elizabethan  literature,  in  all  the  en- 
thusiastic spontaneity  of  its  experimental  outburst, 
aphorism  had  flourished.  Though  the  elder  brother- 
hood of  our  poets  and  writers  seem,  as  we  saw  at 
first,  chiefly  makers  of  phrase,  eagerly  playing  with 
their  newly  mastered  language,  this  very  play  involved 
something  more  than  words  to  play  with.  The  saws 
of  Polonius  awakened  to  humorous  human  vitality 
a  kind  of  common-sense  with  which  Lily  had  packed 
line  after  line  of  his  ephemeral  "Euphues."  The  dif- 
ference between  this  literary  aphorism  and  such  native 
proverbial  wisdom  as  springs,  with  folk-lore,  from  the 
depths  of  humanity,  lies  mostly  in  the  consciousness 
of  its  ingenuity.    A  phrase-maker,  knowingly  at  work, 


178   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

feels  moved  to  make  wise  phrases ;  and  if  he  be  shrewd 
and  hve  in  times  when  the  world  about  him  is  alive 
with  some  common  impulse,  he  may  swiftly  make 
wise  phrases  which  strike  root  deep. 

With  Bacon,  in  the  Essays,  the  phrase-making  im- 
pulse of  the  earlier  days  had  passed  into  a  new  phase. 
As  one  turns  his  pages,  one  feels  in  them  still  the 
full  Elizabethan  freshness  of  play  with  language;  but 
one  feels  beneath  this  play  a  deeper  wisdom  than  any- 
where before.  He  cares  for  phrase,  deeply  and  care- 
fully; he  gives  his  phrases  a  turn,  an  epigrammatic 
decision,  inimitably  his  own,  too;  nor  do  you  feel  him 
always  so  deeply  serious  that  he  would  stoutly  hold 
this  utterance  or  that  impregnable,  so  long  as  the 
turn  of  it  proved  impregnably  happy.  But,  for  all 
this,  he  writes  as  one  who  cares  more  for  the  sub- 
stance of  his  phrases  than  for  their  felicitous  incisive- 
ness.  This  man  has  actually  lived,  you  feel,  and  has 
observed  life,  with  a  keenness  which  has  really  pene- 
trated the  surface;  he  is  ready  at  last  to  generalize 
with  superb  assurance ;  able,  too,  partly  because  of  his 
power,  and  partly  because  of  the  spirit  which  animates 
his  time,  to  generalize  so  wisely  that,  if  we  knew  less 
about  him  and  were  a  little  more  given  than  we  are 
to  faith  in  miracles,  we  might  fall  to  wondering 
whether  such  utterances  came  from  a  being  merely 
human.  Not  that  they  are  divine;  the  wisdom  of 
them  is  the  wisdom  of  this  world ;  but  they  are  not 
diabolical,  either — they  do  not  whisper  such  mocking 


PROSE  179 

half  truths  as  should  lure  believers  into  sloughs  of  false- 
hood. Rather  they  might  seem,  in  fancy,  the  playful 
recreations  of  some  superhuman  enchanter — of  Pros- 
pero,  when  his  robes  were  laid  aside,  or  of  that 
mediaeval  Virgil  to  whose  cunning,  for  so  long  a 
while,  wondering  ignorance  was  apt  to  credit  the 
crumbling  relics  of  Roman  engineering. 

Such  achievement  bespeaks,  as  we  have  just  ob- 
served, a  time  spirit,  from  which  the  impulse  of  the 
individual  master  can  be  quickened.  These  essays 
were  making  while  Shakspere  and  his  later  fellows 
were  at  the  height  of  their  power — when  England, 
as  revealed  in  literature,  was  glowing  with  the  final 
fulness  of  its  Elizabethan  life.  And  Bacon,  when  that 
second  edition  of  them  appeared,  was  fifty  years  old. 
When,  in  an  eagerly  vital  age,  conscious  of  the  in- 
toxication of  crescent  existence,  a  human  being,  native- 
ly shrewd,  is  grown  to  the  fulness  of  his  maturity, 
his  power  of  generalizing  concerning  the  facts  of  ex- 
perience, as  they  reveal  themselves  to  a  single  genera- 
tion or  even  on  the  surface  of  the  generations,  seems 
inexhaustible. 

But  all  this  is  not  absolute  truth,  nor  yet  scientific 
fact.  It  is  only  the  final  utterance  of  shrewd  national 
empiricism.  To  reduce  to  subjection  so  wide  a  prov- 
ince as  all  knowledge,  your  general  must  lay  his  plans 
with  almost  divine  foresight;  and  then,  the  plans  laid, 
he  must  send  ahead  his  armies  of  obedient  scouts  and 
engineers,  to  prepare  the  ways  for  certain  conquest. 


i8o   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

It  was  not  Gordon,  but  Kitchener,  who  recovered  the 
Nile.  And  the  work  of  Bacon's  which,  apart  from 
his  statesmanship,  he  would  have  held  most  serious, 
was  inevitably  abortive.  We  have  not  time  to  enter 
into  any  detail  of  his  philosophy.  We  can  only  re- 
mind ourselves  that  he  perceived,  with  all  the  shrewd 
certainty  which  pervades  his  essays,  the  cardinal  errors 
of  the  old  scholastic  learning;  that  he  pointed  out, 
with  the  same  certainty,  how  sound  and  permanent 
knowledge  must  rest  upon  an  impregnable  basis  of 
ascertained  fact;  and  that  he  never  quite  understood 
how  such  a  basis  could  be  discovered,  or  secured, 
only  by  the  patient  labors  of  more  generations  than 
have  yet  clasped  since  he  caught  his  death-chill  stuff- 
ing a  fowl  with  snow.  So,  even  though  he  pointed 
the  way  in  which  the  future  has  travelled  and  shall 
travel,  the  course  on  which  he  so  boldly  started  to 
lead  brought  him  soon  to  regions  shrouded  in  fresh 
mists — differing  from  the  mists  from  which  he  had 
emerged  only  as  the  mists  of  morning  differ  from 
those  which  thicken  toward  sunset. 

The  "Novum  Organum" — the  beginning  of  his 
magnificent,  unfinished  work  of  cosmic  philosophy — 
was  published  in  1620.  Its  title-page,  which  I  had 
not  recalled  to  mind  until  I  turned  again  to  it,  as  I 
was  writing  this  passage,  may  perhaps  be  the  image 
from  which  there  has  grown  in  my  fancy  that  figure 
with  which  we  have  played  more  than  once — of  the  Pil- 
lars of  Hercules,  toward  which  all  Elizabethan  England 


PROSE  i8i 

buoyantly  voyaged  together,  in  search  of  the  wealthy 
mysteries  of  the  limitless  seas  beyond.  For,  after  the 
quaintly  symbolic  fashion  of  its  time,  this  title-page 
bears  on  either  side  two  round  monolithic  columns, 
doubtless  representing  those  same  Pillars  of  Hercules, 
which  limited  the  world  of  antiquity.  Between  them, 
on  the  title-page,  surges  an  extremely  tempestuous 
sea,  from  which  emerge  two  or  three  monstrous,  big- 
eyed,  fishy  heads.  Neither  waves  nor  monsters  affect 
the  stability  of  a  gallant  ship,  prudent  enough  to  have 
housed  all  but  her  lower  sails.  Bellying  with  the 
full  northeast  w^ind,  these  are  speeding  her  through 
the  momentary  narrows  of  the  straits  which  connect 
the  seas  of  the  past  with  the  oceans  of  the  future. 
A  desperately  grinning  whale  is  scurrying  away  from 
across  her  bows.  And  just  beneath,  on  a  flatly  straight- 
ened scroll,  are  the  words,  "Multi  pertransibunt,  et 
augebitur  scientia."  It  is  from  the  book  of  Daniel : 
"Many  shall  run  to  and  fro,"  the  Authorized  Version 
has  it,  "and  knowledge  shall  be  increased."  The 
image  and  the  motto  have  proved  more  true  than 
Bacon  knew.  He  led  the  way  to  the  straits  of  knowl- 
edge; and  many  have  since  passed  to  and  fro;  but  of 
the  number  he  was  hardly  one.  "Pertransibunt" 
reads  the  motto,  not  "pertransibimus" ;  yet  the  most 
ardent  professors  of  modern  science  and  certain  knowl- 
edge, still  in  the  heydey  of  their  tireless  exploration, 
are  the  first  to  acknowledge  the  brave  leadership  of 
Bacon,  whose  shrewd  wisdom  has  outlasted  his  inev- 
itable error. 


i82   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

After  all,  it  is  Bacon's  aphorism  which  has  won 
him  in  literature  his  most  lasting  eminence.  That 
Elizabethan  world  of  his  had  an  amazing  individual 
and  national  integrity.  The  spirit  of  it  was  common 
to  all  who  breathed  its  air;  nor  yet  had  life  begun 
so  to  specialize  itself,  to  disintegrate,  that  a  great  man 
need  be  great  only  in  a  single  kind  of  greatness.  This 
chief  master  of  our  aphoristic  wisdom,  this  admirable 
inventor  of  inimitably  positive  and  assertive  English 
style,  was  greater  still,  in  his  own  time,  as  a  lawyer 
and  a  statesman  and  a  philosopher.  There  are  few 
more  singular  evidences  of  how  this  world  of  ours 
at  once  changes  and  remains  unchanging  than  in  the 
fancies  which  have  lately  begun  to  twine  themselves 
about  his  memory.  Our  world  has  now  travelled  so 
far  from  his  pristine  and  spacious  Elizabethan  time 
that  none  but  students  of  it  can  quite  know  how  nor- 
mally Elizabethan  was  its  versatile  integrity.  Mar- 
velling, accordingly,  at  all  that  Bacon  was,  unscholarly 
moderns — moderns,  it  were  better  to  say,  unversed  in 
the  history  of  national  temper  as  revealed  in  literature — 
have  been  unwilling  to  believe  that  any  other  man 
of  his  time  could  have  approached  his  range  and 
power.  So,  just  as  mediaeval  legend,  recognizing  in 
Virgil  the  master  of  Latin  poetry,  attributed  to  that 
same  Virgil  the  mechanical  marvels  achieved  by  im- 
perial Rome,  so  a  new  modern  legend  is  seeking  to 
attribute  to  Bacon — statesman,  lawyer,  philosopher, 
and  master  of  aphorism — those  Shaksperian  master- 


PROSE  183 

pieces  of  the  drama  which  anyone  who  really  knows 
Elizabethan  England  must  instinctively  feel  to  pos- 
sess, in  common  with  Bacon's  works,  only  the  spirit 
which  made  all  men  of  the  time  Elizabethan. 


VII 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PROSE 

RALEGH,  BURTON  AND  BROWNE 

Bacon,  we  have  seen,  was  Elizabethan,  Hke  Shak- 
spere;  but  neither  seems  quite  the  most  typical  Eliza- 
bethan of  all.  In  any  time  there  is  apt  to  appear  some 
one  figure  which  proves,  in  the  perspective  of  history, 
to  embody  its  spirit  beyond  all  the  rest.  And  among 
Elizabethan  Englishmen  the  most  comprehensively 
characteristic  now  seems  to  have  been  Sir  Walter 
Ralegh. 

A  country  gentleman  by  birth,  at  heart  the  boldest 
of  adventurers,  he  had  experienced,  by  the  accession 
of  King  James,  almost  every  phase  of  life  known 
to  the  period.  He  had  been  a  soldier,  a  sailor, 
an  explorer,  a  colonizer ;  he  had  been  deeply  concerned 
in  court  intrigues,  and  in  all  manner  of  politics;  as  a 
royal  favorite  he  had  achieved  an  enormous  degree 
of  personal  fortune  and  influence;  he  had  had  his 
multitudes  of  followers  and  of  enemies;  and  he  was 
a  poet,  meanwhile,  who  could  find  time,  when  he  was 
planning  plantations  in  Ireland,  to  listen  to  the  manu- 
script of  the  "Faerie  Queene,"  and  to  reward  Spenser 
by  reading  to  him  in  turn  passages  from  some  epic 

184 


PROSE  185 

of  his  own  which  has  not  survived.  Whatever  region 
of  EHzabethan  Hfe  you  explore,  you  are  sure  to  find 
there — loved  or  hated,  as  the  case  may  be — the  figure 
or  the  shadow  of  Ralegh.  Throughout  this  various, 
adventurous  life  of  his,  a  marvellous  romantic  proto- 
type of  what  nowadays  we  call  self-made  success,  he 
seems  all  the  while  to  have  remained  true  to  one 
patriotic  conviction :  namely,  that  the  future  prosperity 
of  England  depended  on  the  reduction  of  the  world- 
power  of  Spain,  then  at  the  height  from  which  it  has 
crumbled  through  three  full  centuries.  So  far  as  rela- 
tions with  Spain  went,  accordingly,  Ralegh  was  always 
a  consistent  man  of  war.  Now  King  James  was  at 
heart  a  man  of  peace.  In  this  fact  lies  a  good  part 
of  the  secret  of  Ralegh's  fall  so  soon  after  King 
James's  accession.  Within  a  year  or  so  they  com- 
mitted him  to  the  Tower;  and  there  he  remained  for 
twelve  years. 

Such  imprisonment,  at  that  time,  was  a  mere  de- 
tention of  the  person.  Ralegh  was  free  to  see  his 
friends  and  to  busy  himself  with  what  studies  and 
the  like  he  chose.  It  is  to  these  years,  accordingly, 
— to  the  accident  that  the  most  versatile  of  Elizabethan 
adventurers  was  so  long  kept  from  public  activity — that 
we  owe  his  great,  unfinished  "History  of  the  World." 
This  gives  him  permanent  place  in  English  literature. 
With  every  aid  which  the  best  historical  learning  of 
his  time  could  afford,  he  devoted  himself  chiefly  to 
composing  a  universal  history. 


i86   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

The  purpose  and  the  plan  of  this  work  are  not  only 
noble,  but  almost  modern  in  their  calm,  masterful  in- 
telligence. History,  Ralegh  conceived,  is  the  record 
of  God's  purposes,  as  these  are  wrought  out  in  the 
conduct  and  the  fate  of  men.  If  we  study  history, 
accordingly,  with  reverent  care,  it  will  teach  us,  with 
the  know^ledge  of  God's  purposes,  how  we  ought  to  con- 
duct ourselves,  and  incidentally  how  we  shall  most 
surely  prosper.     His  own  words  are  worth  recalling : 

"Such  is  the  multiplying  and  extensive  virtue  of 
dead  earth,  and  of  that  breath-giving  life  which  God 
hath  cast  upon  slime  and  dust;  as  that  among  those 
that  were,  of  whom  we  read  and  hear,  and  among 
those  that  are,  whom  we  see  and  converse  with,  every 
one  has  received  a  several  picture  of  face,  and  every 
one  a  diverse  picture  of  mind ;  every  one  a  form  apart, 
every  one  a  fancy  and  cogitation  differing :  there  being 
nothing  wherein  nature  so  much  triumpheth,  as  in 
dissimilitude.  .  .  .  And  though  it  hath  pleased 
God  to  reserve  the  art  of  reading  men's  thoughts  to 
himself;  yet,  as  the  fruit  tells  the  name  of  the  tree, 
so  do  the  outward  works  of  men  (so  far  as  their 
cogitations  are  acted)  give  us  whereof  to  guess  at 
the  rest." — And  history  is  the  record  of  these  out- 
ward works  of  man,  themselves  tokens  of  the  inner 
purposes  of  God. — "It  hath  triumphed  over  time, 
which,  besides  it,  nothing  but  eternity  hath  triumphed 
over.  .  .  .  By  it  we  live  in  the  very  time  when 
{the  world)  was  created;  we  behold  how  it  was  gov- 


PROSE  187 

erned;  how  it  was  covered  with  waters  and  again 
re-peopled;  how  kings  and  kingdoms  have  flourished 
and  fallen;  and  for  what  virtue  and  piety  God  made 
prosperous,  and  for  what  sin  and  deformity  he  made 
wretched,  both  the  one  and  the  other.  And  it  is  not 
the  least  debt  which  we  owe  unto  history,  that  it 
hath  made  us  acquainted  with  our  dead  ancestors; 
and,  out  of  the  depth  and  darkness  of  the  earth, 
delivered  us  their  memory  and  fame.  In  a  word, 
we  may  gather  out  of  history  a  policy  no  less  wise 
than  eternal ;  by  the  comparison  and  application  of 
other  men's  fore-passed  miseries  with  our  own  like 
errors  and  ill-deservings." 

The  terms  of  Ralegh's  time  were  different  from 
those  we  commonly  use  to-day.  It  needs  no  great 
effort  of  mind,  however,  to  translate  this  grave  and 
noble  statement  of  his  purpose  as  a  historian  into 
something  which  may  well  be  called  the  highest  ideal 
of  philosophic  history.  Nowadays  we  are  apt  to  speak 
and  to  think  of  natural  law  without  reference  to  the 
infinite  sanction  behind  it;  to  be  content  with  assur- 
ance of  how  the  stars  move  in  their  courses  without 
asking  why.  But  as  surely  as  Ralegh  discerned  in 
history  the  record  of  God's  dealings  with  men,  so  we 
to-day  regard  history  as  the  record  of  how  natural  law 
reveals  its  working  throughout  human  society.  In 
history,  as  well  as  in  all  science  else,  the  use  of  facts 
is  that  they  can  finally  enable  us  to  generalize  with 
wisdom,  and  thus  to  know  a  little  and  a  little  more. 


i88   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

For  all  the  archaism  of  the  terms  in  which  Ralegh 
set  forth  his  purpose,  it  accordingly  seems  evident  that 
his  purpose  was  truly  the  abiding  purpose  of  philoso- 
phic history.  To  the  execution  of  this  purpose  he 
brought  an  astonishing  equipment.  He  was  not,  to  be 
sure,  deeply  trained  in  the  arts  of  scholarly  investiga- 
tion, but  he  had  at  his  disposal  the  assistance  of  the  best 
scholarship  of  his  day.  His  own  life,  meanwhile,  had 
involved  a  range  of  experience,  public  and  private,  in- 
tellectual and  emotional,  as  wide  as  any  human  being's 
can  be.  This  experience,  too,  he  had  mastered,  in  true 
Elizabethan  spirit.  No  doubt,  the  career  of  Ralegh 
had  had  its  errors,  even  its  rascalities.  But  he  lived 
before  men  had  begun  to  dream — as  so  many  do  nowa- 
days— that  the  marriage  of  principles  and  conduct  in 
this  world  can  be  complete  and  binding.  So,  for  all  his 
personal  shortcomings,  he  could  honestly  face  his  sub- 
ject with  that  sustained  loftiness  of  mood  and  purpose 
which  is  one  of  the  secrets  of  Elizabethan  grandeur. 
With  such  temper,  he  brought  to  bear  on  the  records 
of  the  past  a  critical  common-sense,  developed  to  a 
rare  degree  by  his  wonderfully  extensive  knowledge 
of  actual  life.  His  purpose,  his  temper,  and  his  merely 
personal  equipment  were  those  of  ideal  historian. 

And  yet  his  great  work,  though  for  many  years  it 
had  deep  influence  on  serious  men,  has  long  since 
become  no  more  than  a  noble  example  of  seventeenth 
century  style.  The  reason  for  this  we  can  instantly 
see.     Glance  at  his  table  of  contents,  to  go  no  further: 


PROSE  189 

you  will  find  him  devoting  a  good  part  of  a  chapter 
to  a  discussion  of  whether  the  tree  of  knowledge  was 
— or  was  not — Hciis  India;  a  little  later  comes  a  long 
consideration  of  the  precise  capacity  of  Noah's  Ark, 
and  a  far  longer  one  of  just  where  that  colossal  craft 
probably  grounded.  Elizabethan  learning  was  exten- 
sive, industrious,  widely  curious;  but  it  was  no  more 
able  than  that  of  modern  children  to  distinguish  be- 
tween record  and  legend.  It  could  make  admirable 
chronicles;  and  a  little  later,  in  Bacon's  wonderful 
"Henry  VIL,"  it  proved  itself  capable  of  admirable 
condensation  of  recent  fact,  traditional  and  docu- 
mentary. But  there  can  be  no  more  final  comment 
on  the  futulity  of  Ralegh's  purpose  in  his  own  day  than 
the  opinion  of  many  serious  modern  students  who  hold 
such  work  as  Bacon's  to  be  even  still  a  model  of  all 
that  a  wise  historian — despite  the  riches  of  accessible 
record  to-day — should  dare  attempt.  Even  still,  many 
believe,  we  are  not  learned  enough  to  philosophize, 
except  perhaps  as  a  pleasantly  playful  waste  of  time. 
More  clearly,  by  far,  than  the  mists  in  which  Bacon's 
philosophy  tended  to  lose  its  details,  the  ultimate  fail- 
ure of  Ralegh's  history  defines  at  once  the  aspiration 
and  the  limits  of  Elizabethan  learning, 

Ralegh's  style,  the  while,  had  a  grandeur  and  a 
beauty  which  make  his  pages  positively  admirable.  A 
hasty  comparison  of  it  with  Bacon's  will  define  them 
both.  Of  Henry  VH.,  Bacon  writes,  in  a  sentence 
which  one  instinctively  feels  to  be  deeply  character- 


iQo   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

istic,  this  incisively  characteristic  fact:  "He  was  utter- 
ly unwilling  (howsoever  he  gave  out)  to  enter  into 
a  war  with  France,  A  fame  of  war  he  liked  well, 
but  not  an  achievement ;  for  the  one  he  thought  would 
make  him  richer,  and  the  other  poorer."  Place  beside 
this  the  famous  passage  with  which  Ralegh's  history 
ends:  "It  is  therefore  Death  alone  that  can  suddenly 
make  man  to  know  himself.  He  tells  the  proud  and 
insolent  that  they  are  but  abjects,  and  humbles  them 
at  the  instant,  makes  them  cry,  complain,  and  repent, 
yea,  even  to  hate  their  forepast  happiness.  He  takes 
account  of  the  rich,  and  proves  him  a  beggar,  a  naked 
beggar,  which  hath  interest  in  nothing  but  in  the 
gravel  that  fills  his  mouth.  He  holds  a  glass  before 
the  eyes  of  the  most  beautiful,  and  makes  them  see 
therein  their  deformity  and  rottenness,  and  they  ac- 
knowledge it. 

"O  eloquent,  just,  and  mighty  Death!  whom  none 
could  advise,  thou  hast  persuaded;  what  none  hath 
dared,  thou  hast  done;  and  whom  all  the  world  hath 
flattered,  thou  only  hast  cast  out  of  the  world  and 
despised ;  thou  hast  drawn  together  all  the  far-stretched 
greatness,  all  the  pride,  cruelty,  and  ambition  of  man, 
and  covered  it  all  over  with  these  two  narrow  words, 
Hie  jacet!" 

Ralegh  and  Bacon  were  both  Elizabethans,  but  Ral- 
egh's writings — as  truly  things  of  their  own  present 
as  were  Bacon's — link  him  to  the  past  and  Bacon's 
to  the  future.     The  quality  of  Bacon's  style — Eliza- 


PROSE  191 

bethan,  yet  all  his  own — is  that  of  a  marvellous  vehicle 
of  precisely  apprehended  meaning;  that  of  Ralegh's — 
Elizabethan,  too,  and  yet  as  deeply,  though  rather  less 
saliently,  individual — bespeaks  a  nature  which  could 
not  express  itself  without  a  rhythmic  ebb  and  flow 
which  should  suffuse  meaning  with  the  throbbing 
strength  of  half-repressed  imaginative  fervor.  Liter- 
ally contemporary,  both  of  them,  with  the  Authorized 
Version  of  the  Bible,  they  add  a  new  feature  to  our 
impression  of  the  period  which  brought  them  forth. 
It  was  the  period,  we  remember,  when  the  drama  was 
swiftly  declining  into  conventions,  and  when  lyric 
poetry  was  beginning  to  disintegrate  under  the  influ- 
ences emanating  from  newly  acknowledged  masters. 
English  poetry,  in  brief,  had  passed  the  limit  of  its 
highest  achievement.  At  this  very  time,  English  prose 
was  gaining  in  range,  in  power,  in  variety;  but,  ex- 
cept in  the  consecrated  words  and  rhythms  of  the 
Bible,  which,  even  in  its  own  day,  was  writ  in  no 
language  ever  used  for  the  daily  intercourse  of  men, 
English  prose  had  not  yet  reached  the  momentary 
stability  of  so  fixed  a  manner  as  should  inevitably 
impose  itself  on  the  writings  to  come.  Here  was 
left  more  than  a  trace  of  the  elder  freedom,  though 
hardly  of  the  elder  unconsciousness.  Here,  at  least, 
was  something  which  might  still  grow,  might  still 
develop  indefinitely  before  the  cramping  grasp  of  con- 
vention should  stiffen  about  it. 

Thus  for  an  instant  touching  on  the  lack  of  restrain- 


192   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

ing  formal  consciousness,  we  may  be  tempted  to  for- 
get the  substance  of  this  crescent  Hterature.  In  the 
Bible  it  had  achieved  the  masterpiece  of  all  translation ; 
in  the  aphorisms  of  Bacon  it  had  achieved  master- 
pieces of  proverbial  wisdom.  The  spirit  of  the  time 
was  friendly  to  both.  When  Bacon  attempted  to  sub- 
ject all  knowledge  to  his  rule,  on  the  other  hand,  and 
when  Ralegh  strove  to  make  all  history  reveal  the 
secret  of  its  laws,  both  failed ;  and  both  failed  because 
each  had  attempted  to  make  the  legendary  and  un- 
critical learning  of  his  time  serve  a  purpose  for  which 
learning  is  hardly  ripe  even  to-day.  In  Bacon's  phi- 
losophy, accordingly,  and  in  Ralegh's  history,  one  may 
feel,  with  all  one's  admiration,  a  certain  vague  dissatis- 
faction such  as  springs  from  a  sense  that  men  are  striv- 
ing to  do  something  which  cannot  be  properly  done 
without  other  material  and  equipment  than  they  possess. 
Here  are  masters,  one  feels,  yet  no  masterpiece. 

In  this  aspect,  Ralegh  and  Bacon  alike  throw  light 
on  the  reason  why,  a  very  little  later,  a  man  so  deeply 
their  inferior  as  was  Robert  Burton  should  have  been 
able  to  produce  a  book  which,  to  any  man  of  letters, 
is  on  the  whole  so  much  more  satisfactory,  even  though 
so  much  less  admirable,  than  theirs.  Like  Bacon  and 
Ralegh,  Burton  was  a  man  of  his  time;  unlike  them, 
he  had  no  such  restless  ambition,  such  versatile  im- 
pulse of  activity,  as  should  urge  him,  even  in  imag- 
ination, beyond  it.  A  quiet,  eccentric,  somewhat 
whimsical  scholar,  he  meddled  in  no  public  affairs. 


PROSE  193 

but  read,  with  a  queer  mixture  of  childish  curiosity 
and  mature  persistence,  in  the  endless  folios,  now  long 
buried  beneath  the  dust  of  libraries,  which  included 
the  learning  of  his  time.  To  him  a  book  was  a  book, 
an  author  an  author,  a  statement  a  statement,  an  opin- 
ion an  opinion.  There  are  few  more  artless  self- 
revelations  in  literature  than  the  passage  from  his 
"Digression  of  Air,"  where,  touching  on  the  solar 
system,  he  mentions,  as  of  equal  authority,  the  names 
of  Copernicus,  Roger  Bacon,  Patricius,  Kepler,  Cal- 
cagninus,  Rotman,  Galileo,  Lansbergius,  Tycho,  Ptole- 
maeus,  and  Dr.  Gilbert.  Whatever  chanced  to  interest 
him,  he  noted  or  remembered;  as  to  criticising  its 
value,  in  any  modern  sense  of  the  term  criticism,  the 
notion  never  occurred  to  him. 

Such  a  man  might  easily  have  been  another  Dry-as- 
dust,  adding  to  libraries  only  one  more  such  drowsy 
folio  as  he  had  found  in  them.  It  is  Burton's  special 
grace  that  he  has  kept  accessible,  to  all  who  love  read- 
ing for  its  own  sake,  an  inexhaustible  treasury  of 
such  oddities  as  without  him  they  would  have  been 
compelled  laboriously  to  collect  for  themselves.  In 
every  sense  of  the  word.  Burton  was  humorous. 
Gravely  accepting  scholastic  physiology,  he  treated 
melancholy  as  a  literal  humor,  which  if  it  got  the 
better  of  the  others  in  a  man  would  work  mischief. 
Aware  of  the  tendency,  inevitably  growing  in  his 
time,  toward  no  too  buoyant  a  view  of  life,  he  set 
to  work  on  an  elaborate,  scholastic  attempt  to  ana- 


194   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

lyze  this  vexatiously  dominant  humor,  and  to  ascertain 
its  causes,  its  nature,  its  varieties,  and  the  best  means 
of  counteracting-  it.  At  first  sight,  his  tables  of  con- 
tents look  like  marvels  of  dry  logical  precision.  A 
stranger  to  the  language  in  which  he  wrote  might 
intelligently  assume  his  work  to  be  a  miracle  of  sys- 
tem. This  pretence  to  scientific  method  gives  us  a 
glimpse  of  his  humor  in  the  modern  sense ;  for  in  truth 
there  was  never  a  more  whimsical,  unexpected  hodge- 
podge than  that  same  "Anatomy  of  Melancholy." 
What  keeps  it  so  lastingly  alive  is  the  actual  humor  of 
its  details.  Burton  does  not  make  you  laugh ;  his  quaint 
turns  of  thought  and  phrase,  however,  quietly  fantastic, 
dryly  good-natured,  constantly  unexpected,  make  him 
one  of  the  few  garrulous  writers  who  never  bore  you. 
How  seriously  he  meant  himself  to  be  taken  is  a 
question  hard  to  answer.  The  eyes  which  look  at 
you  from  his  prim,  dimpled  portrait  at  Brasenose 
College  smile  across  the  centuries  an  assurance  that 
if  you  will  let  him  quietly  amuse  you  with  his  whim- 
sically learned  babble,  you  need  never  quarrel  with  him 
about  graver  things. 

There  were  actualities  in  that  world  of  his,  speeding 
as  it  was  from  the  buoyant  integrity  of  Elizabethan 
England  to  be  clashing  tragedy  of  the  Civil  Wars, 
on  the  eve  of  which,  they  say,  he  "sent  up  his  soul 
to  heaven  through  a  noose  about  his  neck" — humorous 
to  the  end,  in  his  determination  that  some  astrologic 
prediction  concerning  his  length  of  days  should  not 


PROSE  195 

be  falsified.  But  you  might  play  with  the  pages  of 
his  "Anatomy  of  Melancholy"  till  doomsday  before 
you  should  gather  from  them  any  suspicion  of  the 
troubles  thickening  in  the  air  about  them.  There 
is  no  book  anywhere  which  bespeaks  more  personal 
isolation — not,  to  be  sure,  an  ascetic  solitude,  but  a 
whimsical  learned  retirement,  where  you  may  come 
whenever  you  will  and  listen  to  queerly  pedantic 
chat;  and  whence  you  may  go  when  you  like,  with 
a  puzzled  consciousness  of  his  inscrutable  smile,  as  he 
watches  your  departing  shoulders.  You  do  not  know 
quite  what  it  all  means ;  you  have  no  reason  to  believe 
that  he  knows  any  better  than  you.  There  is  a  touch, 
indeed,  of  true,  lasting  melancholy  about  it  all — no 
hearty  laughter,  nor  buoyant  enthusiasm.  Yet  the 
air  is  never  darkened  by  ill-humor,  either.  In  this 
odd  creature's  learned  solitude,  varied  and  enlivened 
by  his  genius  for  collecting  and  recollecting  all  manner 
of  curious  fact  and  fancy,  there  is  an  inexhaustible 
charm. 

His  style,  too,  garrulous  and  amorphous  though  you 
so  often  found  it,  and  saturated  throughout  with  a 
consciousness  of  the  scholastic  Latin  in  which  he  was 
incessantly  reading  and  thinking,  proves  a  singularly 
true  vehicle  of  his  temper.  With  all  its  pedantries  and 
whimsicalities,  it  has  the  admirable  merit  of  making 
you  feel  just  as  the  writer  would  have  you.  There 
is  something  still  contagious  in  the  unpremeditated 
good-humor  of  its  quaintness.      Burton's   "Anatomy 


196   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

of  Melancholy,"  substance  and  form  alike,  is  really 
a  masterpiece.  It  does  its  work  finally.  It  remains, 
what  it  was  from  the  beginning,  a  certain  source  of 
delight  to  all  who  shall  ever  love  the  curiosities  of 
literature. 

There  have  been  plenty  of  literary  oddities  since  his 
time — of  curiosities,  deliberately  collected  and  quaintly 
phrased.  That  variety  of  literature  is  happily  inex- 
tinguishable. But  among  all  the  rest  Burton  stands, 
as  he  stood  from  the  very  first,  isolated,  distinctly 
alone.  And  when  one  asks  from  what  this  im- 
pression of  his  excellent  individuality  arises,  the 
answer  is  not  far  to  seek.  Literary  oddity — either 
in  substance  or  in  style,  or  in  both — commonly  in- 
volves such  effort  as  makes  you  insensibly  suspect 
that  it  is  in  some  degree  a  matter  of  affectation,  or  at 
least  of  intentional  divergence  from  any  generally  ac- 
knowledged standard.  With  Burton,  you  have  no 
such  sense.  Here,  you  feel,  is  a  very  learned  man, 
who  lived  in  days  when  learning  was  a  matter  of 
mere  acquisition.  The  world  had  not  yet  begun  to 
digest  its  mental  food — to  select  that  which  should 
prove  nutritive,  to  discard  that  which  should  prove 
useless.  After  all,  in  those  days,  a  scholar  showed 
deep  good  sense  in  trusting  instinct — in  remembering 
what  amused  him,  in  forgetting  or  ignoring  what 
failed  to  do  so.  When  Bacon  or  Ralegh  tried  to  use 
such  learning  as  they  could  command,  in  earnest,  phil- 
osophic temper,  they  only  revealed  its  poverty;  when 


PROSE  197 

Burton  was  content,  after  the  pedantic  fashion  of  his 
time,  merely  to  collect  it  in  heaps  where  you  can 
always  discover  trinkets  and  fragments  which  you 
would  never  expect  to  find  just  there,  he  did  with 
it  the  only  thing  which  in  his  day  could  be  excellently 
done.  So,  as  you  read  him,  you  fall  unwittingly  into 
a  mood  which  you  shall  hardly  find  elsewhere.  And 
when  you  try  to  give  yourself  acount  of  this  mood, 
in  modern  terms,  you  will  be  at  pains  to  phrase  it  more 
definitely  than  when  you  are  content  to  admit  it  the 
normal  mood  of  learning  in  Burton's  time. 

This  primitive  learning  was  an  inexhaustible  mine 
of  quaint  curiosities.  These  you  could  range  like  the 
specimens  in  some  old-fashioned  cabinet,  or  some 
child's,  where  you  may  find,  side  by  side,  a  nautilus 
shell,  a  Buddhist  prayer-wheel,  an  autograph  of  John 
Wilkes,  a  New  England  hornbook,  and  a  war-club 
from  the  South  Seas.  It  had  little  relation  to  actual- 
ity; it  did  not  trouble  itself  to  distinguish  between 
Copernicus  and  Dr.  Dee;  but,  when  you  chose  to 
accept  it  for  no  more  than  it  was,  you  might  always 
find  it  indefinitely  stimulating  to  solitary  fancy,  al- 
most to  imagination.  Nowadays,  if  you  try  thus  to 
set  forth  learning,  your  play  is  poisoned  with  the 
knowledge  that  such  busy  fruitlessness  is  nothing 
but  play;  what  makes  Burton's  "Anatomy"  a  master- 
piece is  that  it  plays  with  learning  after  the  manner 
of  childhood,  not  quite  aware  and  not  caring  at  all 
whether  this  be  really  play  or  solemn  earnest. 


igS   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

Between  Burton  and  the  other  master  of  our  sev- 
enteenth-century prose  on  whom  we  agreed  to  touch, 
there  are  obvious  points  of  hkeness.  Sir  Thomas 
Browne — for  to  Browne's  name  has  long  clung  the 
knighthood  conferred  on  him  by  King  Charles  II. — 
had  already  published,  before  1648,  the  two  works 
on  which  his  place  in  literature  chiefly  rests — "Religio 
Medici"  and  his  treatise  on  "Vulgar  Errors."  In  his 
literary  mood  these  show  him  to  have  resembled 
Burton  variously:  his  temper  was  essentially  solitary, 
for  one  thing;  he  was  widely  and  curiously  learned, 
too;  and  he  was  instinctively  fond  of  the  oddities 
and  the  curiosities  which  his  learning  brought  to  his 
knowledge.  On  the  other  hand,  Browne  was  a  pro- 
fessional physician,  a  trained  observer  of  Nature;  and 
by  temperament  he  was  addicted  if  not  to  philosophy 
at  least  to  philosophizing.  So  he  was  far  from  con- 
tent to  bring  together  in  fantastic  heaps  the  cullings 
of  his  learning.  Whatever  he  discussed,  he  discussed 
in  speculative  mood.  This  mood,  too,  was  one  of 
such  quietly  sustained  imaginative  fervor  that  he 
could  not  rest  content  with  the  language  of  life  to 
convey  its  meaning  to  his  readers.  Wherever  you 
open  his  pages,  accordingly,  you  will  soon  be  aware 
of  a  deliberate  choice  of  swelling  words,  of  a  cun- 
ningly contrived  rhythmic  surge  and  cadence  of 
sound,  which  has  led  many  critics,  even  among  those 
who  delight  in  his  beauties,  to  condemn  his  conscious 
rhetoric  as  decadent. 


PROSE  199 

Decadent  in  influence  so  palpably  artificial  a  style 
may  well  be.  Take  the  first  sentence  which  chances 
to  meet  my  eye  in  the  address  prefixed  to  his  "Vul- 
gar Errors"  :  "We  hope  it  will  not  be  unconsidered, 
that  we  find  no  open  tract  or  conscious  manuduc- 
tion  in  this  labyrinth,  but  are  ofttimes  fain  to  wander 
in  the  America  and  untravelled  parts  of  truth."  The 
deliberate  manner  of  this,  with  its  conscious  latinism 
of  phrase,  its  thoughtful  elaboration  of  metaphor, 
its  intentionally  delicate  balance,  might  easily  lead 
imitators  to  mannerism.  What  imitators  could  not 
imitate  is  at  once  the  exquisite  feHcity  of  the  final  fig- 
ure, and  the  indefinable  touch  which  excites  your  in- 
stinctive certainty  that  Browne's  emotional  purpose 
could  be  expressed  only  by  this  magniloquent  cadence. 
How  else  should  the  simplicity  of  his  lovely  phrase 
appear  in  all  its  beauty,  than  by  contrast  with  the  big 
words  just  before  it,  and  by  the  rhythm  which  brings 
all  the  emphasis  to  itself?  It  was  the  saving  grace, 
we  saw,  of  Burton's  garrulous  pedantry,  that  nothing 
else  could  faithfully  set  forth  his  meaning;  just  such 
saving  grace  makes  excellent  the  deliberate  rhetoric  of 
Browne. 

With  him  we  are  come  to  a  later  time.  The  church- 
men and  scholars  who  produced  the  Authorized  Ver- 
sion of  the  Bible  had  all  grown  to  their  maturity  in 
the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth;  so  had  Ralegh;  so  had 
Bacon;  so  had  Burton.  But  Browne  was  not  born 
until  after  Elizabeth  was  in  her  grave;  and  before  his 


200   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

''Religio  Medici"  was  published,  thirty-one  years  after 
the  Authorized  Version  saw  the  light,  Ralegh  and 
Bacon  and  Burton  were  dead.  The  theatres  were 
closed  that  same  year  and  the  Civil  Wars  broke  out. 
Browne's  solitude,  the  scholarly  and  philosophic  isola- 
tion of  his  literary  mood,  accordingly  stands  in  stronger 
contrast  to  his  surroundings  than  was  the  case  with 
Burton.  And  the  deliberation  of  his  gently  daring 
rhetoric  becomes  the  more  salient  in  its  contrast  with 
the  fierce  abandonment  of  deliberation  which  was 
whirling  Cavaliers  and  Puritans  alike  toward  the 
climax  of  their  tragedy. 

This  quality  of  deliberation  is  what  most  clearly 
distinguishes  him,  the  while,  from  English  rhetori- 
cians of  earlier  times.  When  Lily  made  his  fantastic 
phrases  and  paradoxes,  you  felt  in  his  work  some 
almost  childlike  gaiety  of  experiment;  when  Sidney 
wrote  the  stray  lines  of  his  sustained  and  graceful 
"Arcadia,"  you  felt  that  their  fantastic  beauties  were 
both  instinctive  and  experimental,  too;  the  grave 
prose  of  Hooker,  with  its  constant  reminiscence  of 
Latin  rhythm,  was  experimental  still;  and  so,  in  a 
more  masterly  way,  was  the  incisive  aphorism  of 
Bacon,  and  the  apostrophic  dignity  of  Ralegh. 
These  men,  one  felt,  were,  one  and  all,  possessed  with 
a  deep  sense  of  their  meaning  and  their  purpose;  and 
so  was  Burton.  The  effects  they  produced  as  mak- 
ers of  prose  were  such  effects  as  spring  from  abandon- 
ment to  the  mood  of  the  moment.     Now  such  effects 


PROSE  20I 

as  those  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  are  too  admirable, 
too  grand,  too  excellent  to  spring  from  any  mere 
intelligence  and  self-command.  Beneath  excellent 
rhetoric,  as  surely  as  beneath  excellent  poetry,  there 
must  lurk  the  true  secret  of  beauty — 

One  thought,  one  grace,  one  wonder,  at  the  least, 
Which  into  words  no  virtue  can  digest. 

What  marks  Browne's  place  in  the  development  of 
our  prose  is  no  lack  of  this  ennobling  force.  It  is 
rather  the  fact  that  this  force,  as  it  appears  to  him, 
is  in  a  stage  where  it  cannot  find  due  expression  with- 
out a  constantly  deliberate  care  for  every  syllable 
which  would  express  it. 

"He  that  hath  wife  and  children,"  writes  Bacon, 
"hath  given  hostages  to  fortune." — "God,  whom  the 
wisest  men  acknowledge  to  be  a  power  uneffable,  and 
virtue  infinite,"  writes  Ralegh,  .  .  .  "was  and  is 
pleased  to  make  Himself  know-n  by  the  work  of  the 
world." — "Divers  .  ,  .  are  cast,"  writes  Burton, 
"upon  this  rock  of  solitariness  for  want  of  means,  or 
out  of  a  strong  apprehension  of  some  infirmity,  dis- 
grace; or  through  bashfulness,  rudeness,  simplicity, 
they  cannot  apply  themselves  to  other's  company." 
— "For  the  world,"  writes  Browne,  in  a  passage  for 
once  exquisitely  simple,  "I  count  it  not  an  inn,  but 
a  hospital;  and  a  place  not  to  live,  but  to  die  in!" 

This  deliberation,  inseparable  from  the  secret  of 
his  gracious  dignity,  seems  to  me  the  characteristic 


202   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

of  Browne  which  is  most  significant  for  us.  We 
might  dwell  on  the  critical  and  gently  sceptical  tem- 
per of  his  still  credulous  learning;  or  on  the  mystic 
idealism  in  which  he  loved  to  soar;  or,  far  more 
still,  on  the  inspiring  certainty  of  his  almost  limitless 
rhetorical  flights.  But  when  we  had  said  all  the 
rest,  we  should  say  again  at  last  that  we  could  not 
really  know  him  if  we  suffered  ourselves  to  forget 
how  the  secret  by  which  he  attained  beauty  lay  no 
longer  in  instinctive  experiment  but  rather  in  deliberate 
and  conscious  mastery  of  language. 

We  have  now  glanced  at  the  five  monuments  of  prose 
with  which  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century 
enriched  English  literature.  There  was  other  prose 
writing  during  these  same  years,  no  doubt;  as  well 
as  other  scholarly  work,  phrasing  itself  in  scholastic 
Latin, — such  as  Napier's  treatise  on  logarithms,  and 
Harvey's  on  the  circulation  of  the  blood, — which  might 
well  deserve  our  attention.  But  this  we  may  fairly 
say:  apart  from  what  we  have  considered,  the  prose 
writings  of  those  years  either  have  failed  to  attain 
a  lasting  place  in  literature,  or  else  have  proceeded 
from  men  whose  full  position  in  literature  was  won 
by  subsequent  work,  written  later.  Browne,  no 
doubt,  published  until  almost  the  end  of  the  Com- 
monwealth; but  if  he  had  left  us  only  "Religio  Med- 
ici" and  the  treatise  on  "Vulgar  Errors,"  he  would 
still  be  the  Sir  Thomas  Browne  we  know.  Fuller 
and  others  published  well  before  the  Civil  Wars.    But 


PROSE  203 

if  Fuller  had  done  no  more  he  would  not  have  been 
the  real  Fuller  of  English  literature;  he  would  have 
been  only  a  late  and  fantastic  maker  of  characters 
and  of  aphorisms.  We  should  have  known  the 
quaintness  of  his  ingenious,  conscious,  by  no  means 
fervid  style;  but  we  should  not  have  understood  the 
peculiar  quality  which  makes  one  remember  with  his 
name  first  the  "Worthies  of  England,"  next  the 
"Church  History,"  and  only  afterward  what  came 
earlier.  Izaak  Walton,  the  while,  had  published  his 
life  of  Donne;  but  the  Walton  of  literature  is  he  who 
wrote  those  other  pleasant  lives,  too,  and  most  of  all 
the  "Complete  Angler."  Selden  had  made  his  "Mare 
Clausum,"  and  Chillingworth  his  "ReHgion  of  Protes- 
tants"; but  both  the  fantastic  claim  of  international 
law  and  the  loyal  Anglicanism  of  the  cool  reasoner 
belong  rather  to  history  than  to  literature.  Jeremy 
Taylor  had  begun  to  write ;  but  he  had  not  yet  proved 
himself  the  "Shakespeare  of  Divines."  So  Hobbes's 
"Leviathan"  and  Baxter's  "Saint's  Rest" — almost  lit- 
erally contemporary — belong  rather  to  later  time  than 
to  the  time  we  are  considering.  The  actual  prose 
achievement  of  these  days  in  question — the  work 
which  did  not  exist  in  1600  and  which  was  complete 
when  King  Charles  bowed  his  head  to  the  axe — was 
what  we  have  now  considered:  the  final  version  of 
the  Bible,  the  works  of  Bacon,  Ralegh,  and  Burton, 
and  the  chief  work  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne. 

During  the  years  when  the  drama  declined  and 


204   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

other  poetry  disintegrated,  we  have  thus  seen,  the 
course  of  prose  was  not  stationary.  In  the  Author- 
ized Version  of  the  Bible,  composite  and  superhuman 
as  the  dialect  of  it  has  proved  to  be,  English  prose 
attained  what  in  certain  moods  one  may  call  its  high- 
est excellence.  The  very  sacredness  of  this  work, 
however,  which  has  so  instantly  and  so  permanently 
raised  it  above  the  level  of  daily  life,  has  made  it  a 
thing  apart — inimitable.  Our  other  prose,  mean- 
while, was  governed  by  no  such  fixed  and  acknowl- 
edged standards  as  imposed  themselves  on  our  poetry. 
Rather,  each  writer  of  prose  used  his  vehicle  with  a 
certain  high  disdain — as  a  thing  no  doubt  capable  of 
amenity,  but  not  in  itself  so  admirable  that  one  need 
vex  oneself  concerning  the  form  of  it,  if  only  its  terms 
and  its  rhythm  chanced  to  serve  one's  purpose.  So 
no  writer,  and  no  school  of  writing  imposed  tradi- 
tions on  the  freedom  of  the  prose  which  Bacon  wrote, 
and  Ralegh,  and  Burton.  A  free  servant  it  remained 
for  whoever  had  the  wit  to  command  it,  still  flexibly 
willing  to  obey. 

Then,  in  the  hands  of  Browne  and  of  Fuller,  it  be- 
gan at  last  to  seem  unduly  fantastic — to  lapse  from 
the  purity  of  the  elder  days;  and  yet  those  are  per- 
haps wiser  who  would  hold  that  the  very  luxuriance 
and  fantasy  of  this  mid-century  rhetoric  belongs 
rather  to  the  untrammelled  freedom  of  elder  days  than 
to  the  graceful  bondage  of  the  days  soon  to  come. 
At  least,  in  that  half-century  when  poetry — dramatic 


PROSE  205 

and  lyric  alike — had  submitted  itself  to  the  yoke  of 
convention,  prose  was  still  so  free  that  whoever  used 
it  might  use  it  unchallenged,  however  he  chose. 

In  another  aspect,  the  course  of  this  prose  had 
more  in  common  with  the  course  of  the  other  litera- 
ture which  we  have  considered  together.  Bacon  and 
Ralegh  were  great  men,  busy  with  the  active  world, 
pervasive  in  the  Elizabethan  omnipresence  of  their 
versatile  integrity;  Burton  was  a  solitary  scholar,  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  was  a  gentle  and  scholarly  mystic. 
Vastly  narrower  his  scope,  his  range,  than  that  of  the 
elder  men;  and  part  of  the  lasting  charm  he  exerts 
comes  from  the  mystic  idealism  with  which  he  con- 
stantly sought,  in  things  beyond  human  ken,  personal 
consolation  for  the  pains  which  come  from  the  bulTets 
of  life.  Something  similar  to  this  we  traced  in  the 
course  of  lyric  poetry — disintegrating  from  the  sweet 
and  comprehensive  integrity  of  Spenser  to  the  ex- 
quisite and  tender  trivialities  of  Herrick,  or  to  those 
utterances  of  ecstatic  solitude  which  render  so  mem- 
orable the  records  of  personal  devotion  during  the 
years  when  England  was  torn  asunder.  And  the 
drama,  meanwhile,  had  faded  out  of  existence. 

A  loss,  then,  of  national  integrity  all  this  literary 
history  shows  us.  Elizabethans  had  spoken  instinc- 
tively to  all  English-speaking  mankind.  These  later 
men  deliberately  uttered,  each  for  himself,  phrases 
which  should  express  or  console  his  own  solitude,  ap- 
pealing only  to  such  as  would  come  to  share  it.     Dis- 


2o6   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

integration  of  national  temper,  it  all  shows,  and  such 
weakening  of  power  as  should  come  from  more  and 
more  individual  isolation. 

Had  we  no  other  records  than  these  at  which  we 
have  glanced,  the  question  before  us  would  be  puz- 
zling. What  had  become  of  the  elder  fervor?  Were 
these  children  of  Elizabethan  fathers  all  puny,  all 
without  the  scope,  the  vigor,  the  pervasive  intensity 
of  the  days  which  so  lately  had  faded  from  the  sun- 
light? 

In  fact,  as  we  all  know,  these  days  in  which  litera- 
ture by  itself  seems  almost  calmly  eddying,  were  days 
when  the  actualities  of  English  life  were  at  their 
fiercest.  The  struggle  of  the  mid-century,  religious 
and  political  alike,  has  left  surprisingly  few  traces  in 
permanent  literature.  One  is  tempted,  indeed,  boldly 
to  assert  that  it  has  left  hardly  any  literary  record 
at  all.  None  the  less,  we  can  in  nowise  under- 
stand the  period  we  are  considering  together,  without 
reminding  ourselves  of  its  deepest  and  noblest  passions. 
On  them — on  the  conflicts  which  burst  into  the  storms 
of  Civil  War — we  must  touch  for  a  while.  Even 
though  this  consideration  take  us  away  from  pure 
literature  into  the  domain  of  history,  we  cannot  under- 
stand without  it  what  the  literature  we  are  studying 
truly  signifies  concerning  the  national  temper  we  are 
striving  to  define. 


VIII 

THE  EARLIER  PURITANISM 

We  have  now  traced  the  general  course  of  English 
literature  during  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  In  1600,  we  saw,  this  literature  was  in 
the  full  height  of  its  Elizabethan  power.  It  had  de- 
veloped its  wonderful  school  of  drama;  it  had  per- 
fected its  peculiar  and  beautiful  kind  of  pristine  lyric 
poetry;  it  had  proved  our  language,  meanwhile,  ca- 
pable of  noble  and  varied  effects  in  prose.  Through- 
out, in  brief,  literature  bespoke  the  spontaneous,  en- 
thusiastic, versatile  temper  of  Elizabethan  England — 
above  all,  its  peculiar  national  integrity.  Somehow, 
to  a  degree  rarely  felt  in  human  history,  all  Elizabeth- 
ans seem  brethren. 

From  this  point  we  have  followed  the  separate  course 
of  the  three  chief  kinds  of  literature,  the  drama,  lyric 
and  other  poetry,  and  prose.  The  drama  we  found  to 
present  a  remarkably  complete  example  of  literary 
and  artistic  evolution;  it  broke  from  its  old  conven- 
tions into  a  spontaneous  freedom  which  for  a  little 
while  seemed  limitless.  Very  soon,  various  masters, 
with  their  varying  tendencies,  began  to  impose  on  it 
their  new  conventions.     Partly  in  obedience  to  these 

207 


2o8   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

conventions  it  sank  toward  lifelessness;  partly,  per- 
haps, in  futile  struggle  against  them,  it  ran  to  rank 
excess.  In  all  aspects  it  declined,  until  the  closing  of 
the  theatres  in  1642  may  be  likened  to  the  sealing  of 
some  tomb.  Turning  to  the  course  of  other  poetry 
during  the  same  years,  we  found  it  similar,  but  not 
identical.  Under  the  influence  of  three  distinct  and 
powerful  masters — Spenser,  Jonson,  and  Donne — the 
tendency  of  lyric  style  grew  no  longer  experimental, 
but  rather  conventionally  imitative;  and  a  school  of 
poetry  which  in  Elizabethan  days  was  superbly  com- 
prehensive became,  during  the  time  of  King  Charles 
I.,  fastidiously  specialized,  tending  either  toward  ex- 
cessive mannerism  or  toward  deliberate  reaction  in 
the  direction  of  a  conscious  and  somewhat  afifected 
simplicity.  So  far  as  the  later  work  has  lasted,  it 
has  lasted  because  of  the  excellence  with  which  its 
extreme  refinement  expresses  the  qualities  of  indi- 
viduals— Herrick,  for  example,  and  the  religious  poets. 
Turning  finally  to  prose,  we  found  once  more  some- 
thing similar,  with  a  marked  difference.  In  style, 
at  least,  Elizabethan  prose  never  developed  into  such 
dominant  conventions  as  forced  decline  on  the  drama, 
and  as  emphasized  the  disintegration  of  other  poetry. 
With  all  its  comparative  freedom  of  form,  however, 
which  persisted  while  poetry  was  stiffening  into 
formality,  prose,  in  substance,  followed  the  same 
course  which  lyric  poetry  took.  The  prose  of  the 
early  days  seems  national.     In  comparison  with  it  the 


PURITANISM  209 

prose  of  the  later  time — Burton's,  for  example,  or  Sir 
Thomas  Browne's — seems  dehberately  individual. 

In  few  words,  if  we  can  sum  up  what  all  this  litera- 
ture has  revealed  of  national  temper,  we  may  say  that 
it  indicates  a  period  when  the  elder  integral  temper — 
with  its  spontaneity,  its  enthusiasm,  and  its  versatility 
— swiftly  disintegrated;  a  period,  too,  when  this  proc- 
ess of  disintegration  tended  to  produce  writers  who 
seem  increasingly  self-conscious,  and  consequently 
more  and  more  deliberate ;  and  that,  so  far  as  its  later 
manifestations  reach  the  lasting  dignity  of  literature, 
they  reach  it  not  because  they  express,  like  Elizabethan 
literature,  a  comprehensive  national  temper,  but  rather 
because,  more  subtly  than  that  elder  literature,  they 
express  the  individual  experience  of  men,  mostly  given 
to  ideal  philosophy,  who  sought,  or  who  were  driven 
into,  personal  isolation. 

Had  we  no  other  records  of  this  half-century  than 
these  literary  ones — the  chief  hterature  which,  during 
this  time,  reached  completion — we  might  well  infer 
that  the  national  temper  of  the  moment  was  not  only 
disintegrant,  but  completely  decadent.  And  glancing 
newly  at  the  surface  of  these  records  we  might  well 
fancy  that  one  phase  of  its  disintegrant  decadence  was 
a  decline  of  the  emotional  power,  of  the  passionate  fer- 
vor which  everywhere  animates  the  writings  of  true 
Elizabethan  days.  An  interval  of  cooling  temper  we 
might  well  guess  the  later  time,  as  we  remember  the 
fading  copies  of  the  later  dramatists  or  the  harshening 


210   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

stanzas  of  the  Spenserians,  or  the  pretty  trivialities 
of  the  Sons  of  Ben,  or  the  quaint  isolation  of  Burton, 
or  the  gentle  rhapsodies  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne. 

And  yet  in  truth,  as  we  all  know,  that  very  period 
was  the  most  fiercely  passionate  in  the  whole  history 
of  modern  England.  In  religion,  and  in  politics 
alike,  historic  forces  were  at  work  vastly  beyond  any 
human  control  for  the  moment ;  and  these  forces,  seiz- 
ing on  men  despite  themselves,  whirling  them  onward 
no  one  could  tell  whither,  stirred  the  nation  to  depths 
beyond  any  which  the  passions  of  the  past  had  moved. 
And  from  this  commotion  arose  the  great  tragedy  of 
the  Civil  Wars.  And  from  the  bewildering  storms  of 
these  there  emerged,  in  the  end,  an  England  histori- 
cally in  another  state  than  that  from  which  the  out- 
break had  torn  it. 

When  the  chief  revolution  of  later  times  occurred 
— the  great  Revolution  of  France — it  was  preceded 
by  a  generation  or  more  of  literature  in  which  we 
can  trace  its  growth.  With  this  literature  familiarly 
in  mind,  the  literature  of  seventeenth-century  Eng- 
land seems  strangely  separate  from  its  history.  How 
wide  the  separation  really  was  may  be  inferred  from 
the  slenderness  of  allusion  to  literary  matters  in  the 
wonderful  history  of  Professor  Gardiner.  He  has  much 
to  say  of  Bacon,  no  doubt,  and  of  Ralegh;  but  very 
little  of  their  writings  which  persist  in  literature. 
And  of  all  the  dramatists  he  cites  hardly  any  but 
Massinger,   in  some  of  whose  later  plays   there  are 


PURITANISM  211 

obvious  comments  on  the  foreign  diplomacy  of 
King  James  I.  In  these  literary  conferences  of 
ours,  we  have  been  able  to  consider  the  litera- 
ture of  England,  under  King  James  and  King 
Charles,  almost  as  if  the  period  had  been  blest 
with  lack  of  history;  and  Professor  Gardiner  was 
able  to  write  the  history  of  that  stirring  time  with 
marvellous  comprehensiveness  and  fidelity,  almost 
as  if  the  time  had  lacked  a  literature.  There 
are  printed  books,  no  doubt,  enough  and  to  spare, — 
pamphlets  and  broadsides,  too,  by  the  thousand — 
which  set  forth,  in  controversy,  the  rising  contentions 
of  the  times;  and  there  are  records  of  the  debates 
which  so  admirably  foreran  the  parliamentary  elo- 
quence of  the  century  to  follow.  But,  so  far  as 
lasting  literature  goes,  it  is  surprising  that  neither 
English  poetry  nor  English  prose  tell  enough  of 
the  absorbing  passions  which  distracted  the  nation 
even  to  suggest  their  existence  to  anyone  who  did 
not  otherwise  suspect  it.  From  what  we  have  con- 
sidered, indeed,  we  could  infer  concerning  national 
temper  little  beyond  a  swift  disintegration  of  what 
had  seemed  astonishingly  integral,  and — along  with 
this  national  disintegration — a  tendency,  both  in 
lyric  poetry  and  in  prose,  to  the  quickening  of  indi- 
vidual consciousness. 

Both  of  these  characteristics  are  doubtless  true; 
but  they  are  so  far  from  comprehending  the  situation 
that  they  can  afford  us  little  help  in  the  confusion  into 


212   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

which  the  history  of  these  years  plunges  any  student. 
There  are  few  historical  periods  which  seem,  as  one 
tries  to  understand  them,  more  bewildering.  To  com- 
ment on  that  stormy  time  at  all  is,  in  a  way,  presump- 
tuous. Clearly,  however,  we  can  in  no  wise  fulfil  our 
purpose  together  without  some  attempt  to  summarize 
those  passionate  and  conflicting  years.  It  is  clear, 
furthermore,  that  the  historical  fact  which  they  most 
surely  involved  was  the  temporary  dominance  in  Eng- 
land of  what  we  may  broadly  call  Puritanism.  Eliza- 
bethan Puritanism,  as  we  remarked  long  ago,  was 
singularly  inarticulate  in  literature;  it  left  hardly  any 
trace  on  the  lasting  surface  of  Elizabethan  letters. 
Something  very  similar  is  true  of  Puritanism  during 
the  years  which  came  between  the  death  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  and  the  Commonwealth.  Yet  the  national 
temper  of  this  period  was  immensely  influenced  by  the 
temper  of  the  Puritans.  To  them,  accordingly,  we 
must  devote  ourselves  chiefly  for  a  while. 

In  a  way,  the  whole  history  of  Puritanism  may  per- 
haps be  less  puzzling  to  Americans  than  to  English- 
men themselves.  For,  as  everyone  knows,  the  settle- 
ment of  New  England,  from  which  so  great  a  part  of 
our  native  American  temper  has  sprung,  was  deeply 
impregnated  with  the  elder  Puritan  ideals.  And, 
although  the  course  of  time  has  gone  far  to  modify 
these,  it  has  never  yet  gone  so  far  as  to  obliterate 
them  from  the  New  England  conscience.  To  any 
New  Englander  of  to-day,  accordingly,  the  general 


PURITANISM  213 

accounts  of  Puritanism  in  England,  and  indeed  of 
Puritanism  by  Englishmen,  are  apt  to  seem  a  little 
blind,  or  at  least  a  little  wanting  in  the  matter  of 
sympathetic  insight. 

By  the  time  when  our  proper  consideration  of  the 
Puritan  character  begins — at  the  dawn  of  the  seven- 
teenth century — the  Reformation  had  done  its  polit- 
ical work  in  severing  England  from  communion  with 
Rome,  and  in  establishing  throughout  the  country  a 
deeply  rooted  Protestant  tradition.  To  a  great 
degree,  no  doubt,  this  tradition  may  be  traced  to 
deliberately  political  causes.  The  story  of  the  Refor- 
mation in  England  is  so  complicated  that,  in  different 
moods,  men  have  been  tempted  to  simplify  it  in 
various  ways  which  neglect  its  spiritual  side.  An 
economic  fact,  for  example,  it  has  been  lately 
called,  as  if  it  were  all  explicable  when  we  dis- 
cern how  much  less  costly  it  made  the  saving  of 
souls.  In  earlier  times  men  who  sought  salvation 
had  been  directed  to  seek  it  by  means  of  an  immensely 
elaborate  and  increasingly  expensive  ecclesiastical 
machine;  when  a  book,  which  anyone  could  buy,  or 
even  could  read  without  the  expense  of  purchase, 
was  substituted  for  this,  the  positive  economy  of  the 
reformed  method  confirmed  the  thrifty  in  their  eager 
conviction  of  its  absolute  truth  and  efficacy.  Again, 
the  personal  passions  of  King  Henry  VIII.  have  been 
credited  with  more  than  their  due  in  the  matter;  and 
so,  perhaps,  has  the  international  aspect  of  Protes- 


214   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

tantism  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  time,  when  the  world- 
contest  with  Spain  made  imperative  every  expedi- 
ent which  could  stimulate  anti-Catholic  prejudice 
among  Englishmen.  These  were  the  days  when 
Foxe's  "Book  of  Martyrs"  was  chained  to  reading- 
desks  in  English  churches;  and  chained  so  fast,  too, 
that  its  honestly  malignant  and  distorted  pages 
excite,  to  this  day,  much  of  the  traditional  horror  of 
Catholicism,  which  still  haunts  extreme  Protestants 
on  both  sides  of  the  sea.  This  Protestant  force,  to 
be  sure,  was  not  all  Puritan.  In  King  Charles's  time, 
they  read  Foxe's  "Martyrs"  at  Little  Gidding,  as 
eagerly  as  the  New  England  emigrants  read  it  at 
Boston  or  at  Plymouth.  But  the  Protestant  propa- 
ganda tended,  on  the  whole,  to  foster  the  spirit  of 
Puritanism. 

And  this  Puritan  spirit,  deeply  as  it  became  com- 
plicated with  politics  and  other  affairs  of  this  world, 
cannot  be  understood  unless  we  penetrate  beneath 
its  ungainly  and  repellent  surface.  What  gave  it 
such  vitality  was  not  the  aspect  which  it  presented 
to  external  observers.  For,  from  the  beginning,  the 
true  Puritans  were  men  whom  the  complicated  forces 
set  free  by  the  Reformation,  stirred,  in  the  depths 
of  their  spirits,  with  such  new  realization  of  spiritual 
life  as  those  who  experience  it  are  apt  to  call 
regeneration. 

Even  in  individuals,  the  while,  and  still  more  in 
society,  the  deeper  religious  experience  of  Elizabethan 


PURITANISM  215 

times  had  been  apt  to  hide  itself  a  Httle  beneath  the 
surface.  Here  Hes  one  reason  why  the  hterature  of 
those  days  tells  us  so  little  of  it.  Courtiers  and  play- 
wrights, soldiers  and  adventurers,  even  statesmen  and 
churchmen  were  mostly  concerned  with  the  busy  and 
absorbing  affairs  of  this  world.  In  those  days,  as 
always  before  and  since,  men  who  tended  passionately 
to  care  chiefly  for  other  worlds  than  this  were  apt 
to  be  men  whom  this  world  either  neglected  or 
oppressed.  Of  course,  this  is  not  absolutely  true : 
"Though  it  hath  pleased  God,"  writes  Ralegh,  the 
most  daring  and  unscrupulous  of  Elizabethan  advent- 
urers, "to  reserve  the  art  of  reading  men's  thoughts 
to  Himself ;  yet,  as  the  fruit  tells  the  name  of  the  tree, 
so  do  the  outward  works  of  men  (so  far  as  their  cogi- 
tations are  acted)  give  us  whereof  to  guess  at  the 
rest."  As  one  ponders  on  phrases  like  this,  one  grows 
to  feel  even  in  that  far  from  Puritan  adventurer, 
whose  energies  were  so  utterly  devoted  to  worldly 
matters,  a  certain  simplicity  of  faith  which  makes  his 
naming  of  God  something  else  than  cant.  But 
that  world  which  Ralegh  found  so  fit  a  field  for  his 
struggles  and  conquests  was,  in  truth,  a  very  evil 
world — full  of  sin,  of  intrigue,  of  trouble,  of  base- 
ness. And  men  like  Ralegh,  whose  energies  were 
given  to  its  business,  were  generally  far  from  such 
devout  realization  of  worldly  vanity  as  compels  those 
who  seek  consolation  to  seek  it  in  regions  where  truth 
must  swim  and  quiver  forever  beyond  human  ken. 


2i6   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

The  Puritan  spirit  of  the  eadier  days  was  of  another 
stripe.  Whatever  external  form  it  chanced  to  as- 
sume, the  men  whom  it  animated  felt  beyond  all 
things  else  the  monstrous  evil  of  earthly  life;  and, 
loosed,  for  better  or  worse,  from  the  old  consoling- 
authority  of  the  united  Catholic  Church,  they  were 
forced  to  seek  for  themselves  the  everlasting  Truth 
which  should  explain  and  atone  for  the  sins  of  man- 
kind. Truth  they  could  no  longer  discern  in  the  tra- 
ditions and  the  mystical  rites  of  Rome;  to  the  Puri- 
tans these  seemed  diabolical  corruption.  The  teachers 
of  the  Reformation  proclaimed  instead  that  truth  was 
all  to  be  found  in  the  words  of  the  Bible.  But  these 
words,  taken  by  themselves,  proved — for  all  their 
power  and  beauty — not  quite  within  the  compre- 
hension of  unguided  readers.  Truth  though  they 
were  they  needed  interpretation.  So  came  an  eager 
interest  in  the  preaching  which  began  to  flourish  so 
luxuriantly.  And  this  preaching,  on  the  whole, 
tended  more  and  more  to  emphasize  that  system  of 
Protestant  theology  which  showed  itself  at  the  time, 
as  it  has  so  often  shown  itself  since,  most  congenial  to 
the  earnest  temper  of  English-speaking  seekers  for  sal- 
vation. 

The  system,  in  brief,  was  that  of  Calvin.  It  is 
full  of  technicalities,  no  doubt;  and  the  points  of  it 
which  have  been  matters  of  such  heart-burning  dis- 
cussion need  not  detain  us  now.  Yet  Calvinism,  in 
outline,  we  cannot  neglect;  for  unfailing  faith  in  its 


PURITANISM  217 

broad  tenets  was  the  basis  of  all  Puritan  character. 
Without  keeping  the  outlines  of  Calvinism  in  mind, 
accordingly,  no  man  can  understand  either  the  origin 
and  growth  of  our.  New  England  across  seas,  or  the 
spiritual  force  which  impelled  the  mother  country  to 
all  the  horrors  of  the  Civil  Wars.  And  there  are  few 
more  surprising  facts  than  the  neglect  of  this  simple 
matter  by  almost  all  the  formal  historians  who,  from 
that  day  to  this,  have  touched  on  the  period  with  which 
we  are  concerned  together.  It  is  hard  to  find  any- 
where a  compact,  historic  statement  of  what  the  Puri- 
tans believed. 

In  brief,  their  creed  was  something  like  this:  We 
can  learn  from  Scripture  that  God  created  man,  in  His 
image,  with  absolute  freedom  of  will.  Adam  chose 
to  exert  his  will  in  contradiction  to  that  of  God.  In 
punishment  for  this,  God's  unbending  justice  forbade 
that  the  human  will,  either  in  Adam  or  in  his  poster- 
ity, should  thenceforth  harmonize  with  the  Divine. 
Humanity  had  made  its  evil  choice;  it  must  bear  the 
unending  penalty;  for  contradiction  of  God's  will  is 
clearly  the  deadliest  of  sin.  So  all  men  were  doomed. 
But  presently  came  the  mercy  of  God,  to  mitigate 
His  justice;  and  through  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  this 
mercy  offered  to  certain  human  beings,  chosen  no 
man  could  tell  by  what  impulse  of  Divine  pleasure, 
the  unspeakable  grace  of  unmerited  salvation.  These 
were  the  elect, — that  little  company  of  saints  whom 
Divine  grace  had  freed  from  the  penalty  of  sin,  ances- 


2i8   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

tral  and  personal.  Now  the  essential  feature  of  this 
penalty,  imposed  in  Eden  on  all  children  of  the  Fall, 
was  that  no  one  who  suffered  under  it — and  those  who 
so  suffered  comprised  the  whole  human  race — could 
truly  exercise  his  will  in  harmony  with  the  will  of 
God.  The  proof,  and  the  only  proof,  of  freedom  from 
this  penalty  was  accordingly  the  discovery  that,  with 
Divine  aid,  a  human  being  could  feel  his  own  will 
miraculously  harmonious  with  God's.  If  such  feeling 
could  persist,  if  it  proved  durable,  it  was  almost  an 
assurance  to  the  individual  who  experienced  it  that 
he  was  among  the  blessed  few  destined  for  salvation. 

Yet  no  wile  of  the  devil  was  more  incessant 
than  that  which  lulled  souls  into  false  security 
by  delusive  mimicry  of  this  Divine  reconciliation. 
To  whom  God  might  choose  to  grant  His  grace  no 
man  could  tell.  There  was  always  a  chance  that  any- 
one might  find  himself  of  the  elect;  there  was  always 
a  chance,  as  well,  that  the  most  prolonged  assurance 
of  this  blessing  might  prove  in  the  end  delusive. 

The  natural  result  of  these  grim  convictions  presently 
ensued.  At  heart,  the  typical  Puritan  became  one 
whose  whole  spiritual  life  was  passed  in  eager,  intense 
effort,  renewed  day  by  day,  to  discover  whether  it 
was  indeed  possible  for  his  errant  human  will  to  work 
in  true  consonance  with  the  will  of  God.  If  so,  he  was 
saved;  and  all  earthly  interests  shrunk  into  the  insig- 
nificance of  earth — a  mere  point  in  the  infinite  ex- 
panse and  duration  of  eternity.     If  not,  why,  earthly 


PURITANISM  219 

matters  mattered  little,  either;  for  whatever  fleeting 
joys  or  grandeurs  might  mitigate  the  vexations  of 
this  twinkling  instant  of  human  wakefulness,  the 
eternity  of  woe  to  come  made  them  meaningless. 

It  is  not  that  any  or  all  of  the  Puritans,  early  or 
late,  would  unhesitatingly  have  accepted  so  simple 
a  statement  of  the  dogmatic  faith  which  they 
cherished.  Humanity  is  too  complex,  and  their  grim 
theologies  were  too  deeply  involved  with  human  com- 
plexity, to  admit  of  a  simplification  which  shall  com- 
prehend the  details  of  their  orthodox  heresies.  But 
it  is  only  when  you  keep  in  mind  some  such  sense  of 
the  heart  of  Calvinism  as  my  brief  statement  has  tried 
to  awaken  that  you  can  begin  to  understand  what 
Puritanism  meant,  and  what  it  uttered,  and  what  it 
accomplished. 

Passing,  for  a  moment,  from  the  theological  aspect 
of  Calvinism,  we  may  find  in  its  insistence  on  the 
infrequency  of  salvation,  one  deep  secret  of  its  last- 
ing power.  Any  creed,  to  live,  must  accord  with  the 
facts  of  human  experience;  or  at  least  must  not  flatly 
contradict  them.  At  first  sight,  the  transcendental 
dogmas  of  the  Puritans  may  seem  as  remote  from  the 
actualities  of  life  as  were  the  heavens  or  the  hells  where 
they  were  held  to  work  themselves  out.  But  look  at 
life  as  one  may  see  it  in  any  comphcated  society — 
such  as  that  in  which  we  live,  or  as  that  which  sur- 
rounded Calvin's  Geneva,  or  as  that  which  passed 
from  Queen  Elizabeth's  sovereignty  to  the  sovereignty 


220   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

of  the  Stuarts.  An  evil  thing,  this  Hfe,  with  its  sins 
and  its  sorrows,  its  pains  and  its  basenesses,  its  idol- 
atries and  its  superstitions;  till  there  is  consolation 
for  the  loss  of  little  children  when  we  reverently 
remember  the  knowledge  which  has  been  spared 
them.  And  it  is  not  only  to  the  righteous  that  this 
struggling,  vexatious  world  must  seem  a  hollow  and 
a  tragic  thing.  Even  among  those  who  are  content 
to  yield  themselves  to  earthly  ideals,  seeking  only 
vanities  which  death  must  take  from  their  grasp, 
all  but  a  few  must  fail.  There  is  struggle  every- 
where for  existence;  and  only  the  fittest  few  can 
ever  survive.  So  in  terms  which  are  themselves 
beginning  to  stififen  into  cant,  we  moderns  have 
attempted  to  generalize  into  the  simphcity  of  com- 
prehensible truth  the  complexities  which  bewilder 
each  fresh  gazer  on  the  phenomena  of  human  exist- 
ence. And  thus  generalizing,  we  find  ourselves,  when 
we  stop  to  consider  what  we  mean,  almost  at  one  with 
the  Puritans  after  all.  They  phrased  their  theologies 
in  the  mystic  terms  of  other  worlds  than  ours;  their 
depravity  and  their  election  were  matters  of  God's 
justice  and  grace,  not  of  what  we  call  the  laws  of  Nat- 
ure. Yet  the  facts  on  which  these  dogmas  were 
really  based  are  just  the  facts  which  we  call  the 
struggle  for  existence  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
Throughout  Nature,  if  one  organism  shall  live  myriads 
must  perish.  And  one  deep  reason  for  the  tenacity 
of  Calvinism  lies  in  the  certainty  that  as  you  strip  it 


PURITANISM  221 

of  its  technicalities  and  its  mysticisms,  it  proves  more 
and  more  to  accord  with  the  processes  of  earthly  life  as 
these  reveal  themselves  to  the  cool  scrutiny  of  science. 

Again,  besides  this  rather  noble  appeal  to  the  rever- 
ence for  truth  which  resides  in  our  higher  human 
nature,  the  Calvinism  of  the  Puritans  appealed,  more 
subtly  still,  to  an  insidious  weakness  of  humanity. 
When  New  England,  in  Channing's  time,  yielded 
itself  for  a  while  to  the  cheerful  optimism  of  the  Uni- 
tarians, those  who  stayed  loyal  to  ancestral  Calvinism, 
with  heroic  disregard  of  the  small  worldly  prizes  they 
might  otherwise  have  hoped  for,  were  accustomed  to 
console  themselves  by  pious  contemplation  of  what 
would  happen,  in  eternity,  to  the  buoyant  and  pros- 
perous heretics  who  had  everything  their  own  way  in 
transcendental  Boston.  What  was  thus  surely  true 
of  Yankee  Puritanism  in  its  decline  was  probably 
true  of  Puritanism  throughout.  It  always  had  a 
singular  power  of  comforting  people  who  had  failed 
to  prosper  on  earth  and  were  disposed  to  envy 
those  who  had  succeeded;  for  if  amid  the  most  humili- 
ating misfortune,  or  the  deepest  personal  obscurity,  a 
man  could  honestly  feel  himself  assured  of  salvation,  he 
could  look  with  a  grim  humor  at  the  passing  pageant 
and  triumph  of  those  whose  infernal  sufferings  should 
presently  and  permanently  enhance  his  saintly  joy. 

Puritanism  thus  made  appeal  both  to  the  strength 
and  to  the  weakness  of  human  nature.  It  laid  mean- 
while extraordinary  stress  on  personal  experience  of 


222   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

religion.  The  systems  which  base  themselves  on 
ecclesiastical  authority  naturally  tend  toward  a  cer- 
tain external  formalism,  attributing  to  their  rites  a 
positive  efficacy  with  which,  indeed,  those  rites  often 
seem  to  edify  the  faithful.  But  if  your  faith,  on  the 
other  hand,  hold  that  you  can  be  saved  only  by  the 
unmerited,  capricious  grace  of  God,  and  that  you  can 
be  assured  of  this  only  by  knowledge  that  you  can 
miraculously  use  your  human  will  in  utter  harmony 
with  the  infinite  will  of  His  divinity,  the  higher  you 
rise  in  your  ecstatic  contemplation  of  His  will  and  His 
grace,  the  less  you  care  for  distracting  rites,  which 
after  all — in  their  visible  aspect — are  only  a  particu- 
larly delusive  kind  of  fleeting  earthly  vanity.  So  at 
first  you  are  indifferent  to  ecclesiastical  forms  or  even 
churchly  control;  and  then,  if  this  control  prove  gall- 
ing, you  spurn  it.  Nothing  human  shall  be  suffered 
to  stand  between  you  and  the  absolute  will  of  God. 
But  how  shall  you  be  assured  that  what  you  deem 
God's  will  is  no  delusion?  By  searching  Scripture,  of 
course ;  by  saturating  yourself  in  the  Spirit  of  the 
Word  of  God,  wherein  is  divinely  revealed,  if  not  all 
truth,  at  least  every  ray  of  truth  which  is  essential 
to  salvation.  The  visible  Scripture  is  only  a  letter — 
another  human  fact;  but  beneath  this  letter  lies  the 
Spirit.  Except  by  Divine  grace,  no  doubt,  the  Spirit 
will  not  reveal  itself  at  once;  the  letter  is  a  human 
veil,  quivering  filmy  between  the  seeking  believers 
and  the  truth  they  seek.     But  persevere;  strain  every 


PURITANISM  223 

faculty  to  understand  assuredly  the  infinite  and  Divine 
meaning  which  the  sacred  words  dimly  shadow  forth. 
And  by  and  by,  with  inefifable  irradiation,  you  shall 
find  yourself  suddenly  snatched  up  unawares  into  the 
realms  where  Truth  shines  changeless  above  the  mists 
and  the  errors  of  this  frail  and  fleeting  Time. 

Yet  even  here  the  devil  may  play  you  false.  How 
shall  you  be  assured  that  even  your  most  devout 
ecstasy  is  not  only  fresh  delusion,  more  deeply  dia- 
bolical than  ever,  for  its  very  likeness  to  holiness? 
Here,  surely,  the  Puritans  felt,  the  rites  and  the  mum- 
meries with  which  the  superstition  of  the  ages  has 
smothered  what  sparks  of  truth  once  strove  to  glow 
beneath  them  can  serve  you  less  than  little.  Your  effort 
is  to  bring  yourself,  from  amid  all  the  fatal  perversity 
and  weakness  of  corrupt  humanity,  to  regions  where 
that  will  of  yours,  distorted  by  the  sin  of  Adam,  may 
once  more  miraculously  find  itself  in  everlasting 
accord  with  the  unbending  and  unending  purposes 
of  God.  From  God  Adam  fell  away  in  innocence;  what 
shall  his  poor  children  do  in  this  age  of  villainy?  First 
of  all,  they  must  free  themselves  from  all  the  bonds 
and  the  delusions  of  earth,  fixing  their  eyes  only  on 
those  regions — beyond  the  vision  of  mere  humanity, 
whether  alone  or  banded  in  blind  and  errant  churches 
— where,  with  God  Himself,  rejoicing  in  His  justice, 
adoring  the  miracle  of  His  mercy,  the  saints  may 
look  down  on  the  shadows  from  which  none  but  their 
blessed  company  may  ever  emerge. 


224   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

And  this  hallowed  company  of  the  saints  is  itself 
a  mystic  brotherhood.  The  accordance  of  their 
regenerate  spirits  with  the  spirit  of  their  Creator  and 
their  Preserver  brings  them  into  immortal  harmony 
not  only  with  Him  but  also  with  one  another.  The 
saints,  and  those  who  aspire,  hopefully  or  despair- 
ingly, to  their  glorious  fellowship,  may  speak  to  one 
another,  and  listen,  and  begin  to  understand.  It  is 
the  spirit  of  the  saints  which  can  truly  interpret 
Scripture — the  spirit  of  the  saints  breathed  through 
their  own  lips,  or  through  the  lips  of  others  who,  even 
though  lost,  are  content  to  repeat  the  messages  which 
they  reverently  adore,  even  though  they  may  not 
share  the  ineffable  joy  of  spiritual  communion  with 
the  God  from  Whom  they  come.  The  Book  of  Life 
contains  the  Living  Word;  but  to  reach  the  heights 
from  which  we  can  really  perceive  how  the  pages 
burn  with  the  mystic  and  immortal  fervors  of  their 
inner  meaning,  we  must  be  guided  by  the  spoken 
words  of  those  whose  spirits  are  already  bathed  in 
the  purifying  fires  of  God's  mercy. 

Again,  we  stray  perhaps,  to  phrases  and  even  to 
thoughts  and  moods  which  the  Puritans  would  never 
have  quite  acknowledged  as  their  own.  Yet  some 
such  temper  as  must  underlie  the  thoughts  and  the 
moods  of  devotion  which  we  have  just  striven  sympa- 
thetically to  awaken  seems  beyond  doubt  to  have  ani- 
mated the  whole  Puritan  world.  Sympathizing  with 
it,  accordingly,  even  though  we  forget  the  terms  in 


PURITANISM  225 

which  amid  errors  of  our  own  we  have  attempted  to 
phrase  it,  we  can  hardly  fail  sympathetically  to  under- 
stand why  the  Puritans,  in  their  worship,  precisely 
reversed  the  traditional  opinion  and  practice  of  Ca- 
tholicism. To  the  traditional  Church,  the  essence  of 
worship  lay  in  observance  of  the  consecrated  and  mys- 
tic rites  by  which  God  had  bidden  His  ministers 
symbolize  to  humanity  the  infinite  mysteries  of  His 
truth.  And  those  served  God  best  who  were  rewarded 
for  their  faithfulness  by  a  sense  of  their  fellowship  in 
holy  sacrament  with  the  vast  body  of  His  servants 
who  throughout  the  Christian  centuries  have  com- 
posed the  visible  Church.  There  was  always  Catholic 
preaching,  no  doubt;  but  this  preaching  was  a  second- 
ary matter.  You  might  listen  or  not  as  you 
preferred.  The  preacher,  if  he  were  faithful,  spoke 
not  for  himself,  but  for  the  Church  of  which  he  was 
an  officer;  and  the  soul  of  his  office  lay  not  in  his  words 
but  in  his  ministrations.  Accept  these,  and  let  his 
words  be  what  they  might.  Indeed,  if  you  were  so 
disposed,  you  might  even  doubt  the  wisdom  of  Hsten- 
ing  to  any  preacher  whomsoever ;  for,  at  best,  preach- 
ers were  only  men,  who  might  yield  to  vain  tempta- 
tions, and  speak  not  what  the  Church  taught,  but  what 
their  erring  selves  chose  to  fancy.  Abandon  yourself 
to  the  blessed  mysteries  of  sacrament,  then,  and  let 
preaching  hold  its  minor  place  if  it  would.  You  need 
no  sermons  to  guide  you  heavenward;  rather,  at  best, 
sermons  are  earthly  edifications. 


226   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

To  the  Puritans,  on  the  other  hand,  preaching  was 
all  in  all.  From  the  hps  of  sanctified  divines  could 
come,  as  from  no  other  conduits,  the  living  spirit  of 
God;  and  every  form  or  device  was  a  Winding  evil, 
which  should  distract  attention  from  the  words  of  the 
preacher  to  the  ceremonies  of  the  minister.  Distract- 
ing they  found  even  the  comparative  lifelessness  of 
a  formal  ritual,  as  contrasted  with  the  fervor  of  new- 
made  prayer;  distracting,  too,  they  found  the  atti- 
tudes of  reverence  which  had  been  deadened  into 
formalism  by  ancestral  custom;  more  distracting  still 
they  found  the  pageantry  of  vestments,  and  altars 
and  painted  glass,  and  even  the  glorious  music  of 
organs  and  chants  which,  however  inspiring,  filled 
their  ears  with  nothing  higher  than  the  momentary 
harmonies  of  this  sinful  earth. 

Nor  was  it  only  as  a  distraction  from  the  efficacies 
of  preaching  that  the  Puritans  distrusted  and  con- 
demned those  forms  in  which  the  Anglican  authorities 
and  worshippers  of  King  Charles's  time  discerned  only 
the  beauty  of  holiness.  This  very  beauty  of  earthly 
holiness,  the  Puritans  felt,  might  well  dim  over  eyes 
to  the  unspeakably  greater  beauty  of  that  holiness 
which  shines  beyond  the  mists  of  earth.  These  Puri- 
tans have  often  been  declared  by  posterity  to  have 
lacked  imagination.  In  the  years  when  all  the  wealth 
of  Elizabethan  literature,  and  the  literature  we  have 
glanced  at  since,  enriched  our  world;  in  the  years 
when,  whatever  its  errors  and  its  vices,  the  surface  of 


PURITANISM  227 

English  life  glowed  with  a  pageant-like  brilliancy 
which  has  hardly  been  shadowed  in  later  times,  the 
Puritans,  plain  in  dress,  severe  in  aspect,  often  rude  of 
phrase,  produced — at  least  in  so  characteristic  a  form 
that  we  can  assert  it  all  and  only  theirs — little  other 
lasting  utterance  than  endless,  acrid,  crabbed  sermons, 
or  pamphlets,  or  books  of  controversy.  To  under- 
stand how  these  men,  even  in  imagination,  too,  were 
brethren  of  the  generation  which,  in  other  ways,  added 
most  of  all  during  those  before  us  to  the  imaginative 
wealth  of  our  common  race,  needs  nowadays  an  effort 
of  imagination  in  ourselves. 

It  is  hard  to  wrest  ourselves  from  this  twentieth 
century  to  the  regions  where  the  Puritan  fore- 
fathers of  New  England  found  themselves  three  hun- 
dred years  ago.  It  is  hard  to  understand  that  the 
most  ardent  imagination — like  the  most  soaring 
ambition — often  lacks  the  aspect  by  which  we  recog- 
nize the  quahty  in  its  lesser  form.  But  make  the 
effort  yourself,  to-day;  yield  yourself  for  the  instant 
to  the  mood,  which,  a  little  while  ago,  we  were 
striving  to  revive  together.  Figure  to  yourself  that 
every  energy  of  your  being  is  consciously,  pain- 
fully, ardently  devoted  to  an  effort  to  assure  your- 
self that  your  will  is  at  one  with  that  of  God.  Stop, 
then,  for  an  instant.  Reflect,  as  you  contemplate 
that  effort,  how  in  essence  it  is  an  attempt  to  realize 
in  terms  of  the  human  mind  the  infinite  glories  of 
unfathomable    Divinity.     Reflect    how    deeply,    how 


228   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

immutably  this  purpose  must  transcend  any  human 
power  which  strives  to  accompHsh  it.  Understand 
how  that  elder  race  of  Puritans  knew  their  human 
weakness  as  well  as  you  know  yours;  but  how  they 
hoped,  against  despair,  that  God's  miraculous  mercy 
would  grant,  to  one  or  to  another,  the  ineffable  mys- 
tery of  His  all-seeing  grace.  And  you  shall  feel,  by 
and  by,  how  all  the  imaginative  power  of  our  most 
imaginative  elder  time  could  lose  itself  unperceived 
in  this  illimitable  aspiration;  leaving  for  the  sight  of 
men  only  an  exterior  which  seemed  utterly  to  lack 
that  imaginative  life  whose  utmost  powers  were  ex- 
hausted by  the  unspeakable  passions  of  the  spirit. 
There  are  few  more  wonderful  experiences  possible 
than  that  which  will  come  to  you  if  you  have  patience 
to  pore  over  some  musty,  crabbed  Puritan  sermon 
until  the  words  begin  to  swim,  and  their  meaning  to 
fade  even  beyond  its  harsh  obscurities,  and,  of  a 
sudden,  you  are  aware  that  this  is  only  another  dar- 
ing, futile,  fleeting  effort  to  express  in  the  passing 
terms  of  earth  an  ecstatic  sense  of  the  eternal  mys- 
teries above — those  mysteries  amid  whose  glories  the 
spirits  of  the  saints  may  triumphantly  and  securely 
emerge  from  the  errors  and  distortions  of  corrupt 
human  will  into  everlasting  communion  with  the  vast 
justice  and  mercy  of  Omnipotence. 

We  need  not  marvel  that  no  works  of  art  came 
from  these  men.  The  unspeakable  magnitude  of 
their     awakened     spiritual     purpose     caused     them 


PURITANISM  229 

instinctively,  as  well  as  deliberately,  to  distrust,  to 
disdain,  to  condemn  the  distracting  trivialties  of 
earthly  beauty,  fading  at  its  noblest  like  the  flowers 
with  which  it  decked  its  passing  pageants.  Like  the 
lesser  pageants  and  vanities, — like  the  courts,  and  the 
play-houses,  and  all  the  rest, — the  very  beauty  of 
earthly  holiness,  in  the  formal  ceremonies  of  what- 
ever creed,  seemed  to  the  Puritans  only  obstacles 
embarrassing  the  vision  which  would  lose  itself 
in  ecstatic  contemplation  of  the  glories  which  no  time 
nor  circumstance  can  ever  change  or  end. 

This  intense,  transcendental  idealism  surely  under- 
lay the  grotesque,  uncouth  exterior  of  the  elder 
Puritans;  and  vitalized  the  spirit  which  was  to  grow 
so  sturdily  during  the  years  when  it  made  so  little 
mark  on  literature.  Essentially  heretical,  in  the  sense 
that  it  threw  on  each  man  who  accepted  its  teaching 
the  duty  and  the  responsibility  of  free  spiritual  choice, 
this  spirit  was  doomed  to  clash  with  any  severe  or 
formal  assertion  of  spiritual  authority.  For  a  while 
ecclesiastical  control  of  it  was  not  oppressive;  yet 
there  was  never  quite  such  freedom  from  this  as  should 
suffer  it,  like  unopposed  heresy,  to  evaporate  into 
individual  vagary.  And,  as  the  generations  began 
to  pass,  and  Puritanism  itself  began  to  be  a  new  tra- 
dition, with  its  own  dogmas  and  its  own  worthies, 
its  own  orthodoxies  and  solidarities,  there  began  to 
arise,  or  at  least  to  define  itself,  that  Anglican  oppo- 
sition to  it  which  was  as  honest  as  itself. 


230   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

As  this  tendency  increased,  and  moved  fatally  tow- 
ard its  acme  in  the  tragically  futile  efforts  of  Arch- 
bishop Laud  to  make  the  whole  English  church 
conform  in  the  beauty  of  holiness,  the  dogmas  of 
Puritanism  hardened  into  freshly  aggressive  uncouth- 
ness.  Then  there  arose  inevitably,  in  the  spiritual 
life  of  England,  one  of  those  deep  mutual  misunder- 
standings which  must  always  underlie  honest  warfare. 
Good  men,  in  this  world,  seek  righteousness;  but  their 
paths  are  divers;  and  when  two  have  travelled  long 
apart,  and  look  at  one  another  from  afar,  each  seems 
to  the  other  bound  for  perdition.  Neither  can  dis- 
cern, or  will  stop  to  remember,  the  purpose  which 
they  hold  in  common.  Both  are  blinded  by  the  per- 
ception that  their  paths  are  parted.  And  so,  when 
the  troubles  began  to  thicken,  the  Anglicans  seemed 
to  the  Puritans  harking  back  to  the  enslaving  and 
damnable  superstitions  of  ancestral  Rome;  and  to 
the  Anglicans  the  Puritans  seemed  Httle  but  prag- 
matic and  turbulent  anarchists. 

By  this  time  we  have  strayed  far  from  all  precise 
fact,  and  very  far  from  precise  chronology.  In  such 
generalizations  as  have  been  forced  upon  us,  there  is 
deep  danger  of  unmeaning  and  misleading  vague- 
ness. Yet,  if  we  reflect,  we  shall  perceive  that,  to 
this  moment,  we  have  considered  Puritanism  only  in 
its  inner  and  spiritual  aspect.  Throughout  its  course, 
it  surely  had  another;  its  nature  was  one  which  must 
meddle  with  the  conduct  of  this  world.    If  the  deepest 


PURITANISM  231 

conviction  of  your  being  become  a  belief  that  your 
erring  human  will  has  been  brought  miraculously  into 
harmony  with  the  will  of  God,  the  Ruler  of  the  Uni- 
verse, you  cannot  be  indifferent  to  the  conduct  of 
God's  creatures,  your  fellow-men.  And  so,  now  and 
again,  the  Puritans  openly  attacked  the  ungodly 
vagaries  of  other  than  themselves — the  earthly 
splendors  and  pretensions  of  prelacy,  for  example; 
the  vanities  and  corruption  of  those  growing  centres 
of  sin,  the  pubHc  theatres;  the  distracting  wickedness 
of  health-drinking,  and  of  love-locks;  and  whatever 
else.  But,  at  first  and  for  long,  the  Puritans  were  not 
apt  to  forget  the  Divine  injunction  that  men  are  to 
render  unto  Caesar  the  things  which  are  Caesar's. 
They  were  eager,  as  few  other  companies  in  history 
have  ever  been,  that  Hfe,  in  all  its  earthly  aspects, 
should  obey  the  dictates  of  duty — of  everlasting 
right.  But  they  w^ere  willing  to  admit  on  the  earth 
the  potency  of  those  rights  by  which  ancestral  law 
had  directed  the  course  of  history. 

Yet  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  something  like 
established  law  supported  the  crescent  assertion  of 
ecclesiastical  power  which  strove  to  suppress  the 
uncouth  outward  manifestations  of  their  ineffable 
inward  fervor.  So  when  the  authority  of  the  Church 
in  which  they  still  claimed  membership  bade  them 
observe  the  external  decorum  which  they  had  con- 
scientiously disdained,  a  question  arose  which  went 
deeper  than  any  man  quite  foresaw.     The  question 


232   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

at  first  seemed  one  of  surplices  and  of  genuflexions, 
of  reverenced  altars  or  communion  tables  ostenta- 
tiously used  for  secular  purposes,  of  printed  liturgies 
or  prayers  and  sermons  which  should  breathe  the  in- 
spiration of  the  individually  devout  elect  of  God.  But 
to  the  Puritans  it  soon  became  rather  a  question  of 
how,  if  at  all,  the  right  they  were  divinely  bidden  to 
follow  could  be  brought  into  accord  with  the  rights 
to  which  ancestral  law  had  limited  their  earthly  privi- 
leges as  Englishmen. 

Dangerous  though  catch-words  be,  it  will  repay  us 
to  remember  these  two:  right  and  rights.  Right  is 
an  obligation  sanctioned  by  duty  and  by  ideal  jus- 
tice, springing  from  the  heavens  above;  rights  are 
privileges  and  duties  assured  mankind  by  the  human 
laws  under  which  they  live.  Right  is  divinely 
abstract ;  rights  are  humanly  concrete.  And  in  earthly 
affairs,  the  two  can  seldom  quite  coincide.  Again 
and  again,  throughout  history,  there  have  accordingly 
come  efforts  to  reform  human  affairs  in  accordance 
with  abstract  ideals — to  impose  on  the  distortions  or 
the  errors  of  rights,  as  defined  by  the  passing  and 
various  systems  of  human  law,  the  higher  authority 
of  ideal  right.  Sometimes  these  efforts  are  merely 
reforms;  sometimes  they  are  revolutions.  Almost 
always  they  subtly  and  unexpectedly  alter  the  course 
of  society  and  thus  affect  the  development  of  national 
temper.  They  hardly  ever  accomplish  precisely  what 
they  so  eagerly  and  fervently  believe  that  they  shall; 


PURITANISM  233 

for  though  right  be  divine  in  its  ideal  origin,  the 
phrasing  of  its  dictates  in  human  terms  is  sure  to  dim 
its  purity;  and  although  rights,  in  epochs  of  aberra- 
tion and  oppression,  be  never  so  distorted,  they  surely 
have  their  origin  in  centuries  of  experience  which 
has  proved  them  favorable  to  human  safety  and  pros- 
perity. In  a  way,  one  may  assert,  the  noblest  aspira- 
tion of  practical  politics  is  that  right  and  rights  may 
be  made,  as  nearly  as  possible,  to  agree.  Both  must 
always  exist;  both  must  always  be  recognized;  neither 
may  safely  be  suffered  quite  to  prevail  over  the  other. 
Those  epochs  are  happiest,  they  say,  which  have  no 
history;  another  way  of  phrasing  this  meaning  were 
to  assert  those  epochs  most  happy  when  for  a  little 
while  the  ideals  of  right  and  the  state  of  rights  are 
enough  at  peace  to  leave  men  free  in  their  individual 
courses  toward  wealth  and  righteousness. 

Now,  when  Puritanism,  in  the  early  years  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  found  its  ideal  of  right  more  and 
more  at  odds  with  so  many  of  the  rights  which,  at 
least  formally,  were  asserted  by  the  civil  and  eccle- 
siastical law  of  England,  there  came  to  it  a  deep  ques- 
tion. Just  then,  even  though  Puritanism  had  pos- 
sessed the  unity  and  the  force  demanded  for  organized 
resistance,  the  time  was  not  ripe  for  the  Civil  Wars 
so  soon  to  come.  Yet  the  Puritans  could  not  consci- 
entiously yield  to  the  authority  which,  misunderstood 
and  misunderstanding,  was  doing  its  utmost  to  curb 
them.     The  moment  might  consequently  have  been 


234   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

expected  to  produce,  at  least  in  controversy,  some 
passionate  literary  assertion  of  Puritanism, — of  deter- 
mination that  when  right  and  rights  clash,  right  must 
prevail, — which  should  have  emerged  into  the  lasting 
eminence  of  literature.  For  such  a  document,  I  think, 
we  may  search  English  literature,  at  least  before  Mil- 
ton's time,  in  vain.  But  the  very  columns  in  which 
the  chronology  of  English  literature  is  anywhere 
recorded  would  reveal,  at  precisely  this  period,  a  fact 
in  history,  trivial  in  seeming  at  the  moment  but  incal- 
culable in  its  consequence,  which,  without  undue  fan- 
tasy, we  may  call  the  true  national  expression  of 
Elizabethan  Puritanism. 

In  the  days  which  are  now  in  our  minds,  the  seven- 
teenth century  was  still  in  its  late  youth,  and  as  yet 
Puritanism  had  made  no  literary  record  of  its  passion- 
ate intensity.  But  remember  two  simple  facts: 
Queen  Elizabeth  died  in  1603.  Before  1630  the 
Pilgrims  of  Plymouth  and  the  Puritans  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay  had  planted  their  colonies.  An  instant  of 
reflection  will  assure  us  of  one  fact  which  those  mere 
dates  irrefutably  imply.  Every  man  of  mature  years 
in  those  emigrant  companies  of  ancestral  Americans 
had  been  born  in  the  integral  and  spacious  days 
of  the  great  Queen.  Every  one  of  them  was 
literally  one  who,  in  other  than  Puritan  paths  of 
English  life,  might  have  mingled  with  the  drama- 
tists, and  the  poets,  and  the  great  makers  of 
our  pristine  prose  whose  works  together  comprise 


PURITANISM  235 

the  literature  which  we  call  Elizabethan.  Every  one 
of  them  might  have  Hstened  to  the  words  which  fell 
from  the  lips  of  those  namelessly  remembered  immor- 
tals whose  learned  labors  finally  consecrated  the 
terms  of  the  English  Bible.  And  every  one  of  them 
was  a  devoted  Puritan.  Their  emigration  was  im- 
pelled by  the  fervent  spirit  of  their  faith.  It  was  no 
such  abstract  love  of  ideal  liberty  as  the  superstitious 
traditions  of  our  later  democracy  have  fondly  ascribed 
to  them,  which  led  them  painfully  to  seek  refuge  in 
what  Cotton  Mather  fitly  called  the  solitudes  of  an 
American  desert.  The  true  impulse  which  founded 
New  England  was  a  hope  that,  in  the  unhampered 
wilderness  of  a  virgin  continent,  the  Puritans  might 
so  adjust  their  lives  that  right  and  rights  should  agree 
as  nowhere  else  on  earth.  If  you  seek,  then,  for  the 
great  and  lasting  human  expression  of  Elizabethan 
Puritanism,  you  shall  not  find  it  in  literature;  but  turn- 
ing your  eyes  across  the  seas,  you  shall  find  it  there, 
in  the  planting  of  New  England,  and  in  the  still  vital 
historical  growth  which  has  sprung  from  that  seed. 

For,  in  that  continent  of  forest  and  of  wilderness, 
which  even  to-day  is  hardly  yet  subjected  to  the  ser- 
vice of  man,  there  was  no  external  force  which  could 
impose  on  the  immigrant  fathers  other  ideals  than 
their  own.  Limited  and  dogmatic  enough  these  were, 
beyond  peradventure;  as  far  from  tolerance  or  devo- 
tion to  abstract  ideals  of  Hberty  as  ever  were  those 
of    Strafford,    or   of   Laud,    or   of    Charles   himself. 


236   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

But,  whatever  else,  these  Puritan  ideals  were  sturdy 
in  their  determined  hope  that  human  rights  should 
be  controlled  by  the  Divine  right  which  springs 
not  from  kings  or  bishops,  but  straight  from  the  spirit 
of  God — that  a  deeper  principle  than  law  itself  could, 
and  should,  dominate  and  inspire  a  newly  durable  and 
vital  law.  And,  as  the  fathers  fell  away  one  by  one, 
and  the  generations  of  their  children  one  by  one  stood 
in  their  places,  the  ideals  which  had  been  revolu- 
tionary in  the  old  world  acquired  in  the  new  the 
ineffable  sanction  of  revered  tradition.  This  paradox 
of  ideality  behind  law,  strengthened  by  three  centuries 
of  ancestral  faith,  is  the  deepest  secret  of  American 
temper  to-day.  The  changes  of  time  have  changed 
its  utterances  and  its  aspect;  but  they  have  never 
quenched  its  spirit. 

New  England,  no  doubt,  is  past  its  zenith;  but  even 
to  this  day  it  is  to  New  England  that  those  must  turn 
who  would  understand,  in  all  the  mysterious  and  inef- 
fable certainty  of  the  spirit,  the  abiding  nature  of 
pristine  Puritanism.  For  the  lasting  human  expres- 
sion of  that  intense  form  of  Elizabethan  life  was  unlike 
the  rest.  Elizabethan  existence  expressed  itself  in  lit- 
erature which  shall  live  as  long  as  our  language. 
Elizabethan  Puritanism,  the  while,  created  our  New 
England,  whose  shadow  still  hovers  in  the  sunshine. 


IX 

THE  LATER  PURITANISM 

We  have  been  compelled  to  turn  aside  from  our 
contemplation  of  literature  by  itself,  for  the  literature 
with  which  we  are  concerned  can  hardly  be  under- 
stood without  some  recognition  of  the  forces  which, 
while  it  was  so  swiftly  disintegrating,  absorbed  the 
passion  of  the  English  race.  In  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  we  have  seen,  the  dominant 
assertion  of  Puritanism  was  a  fact  so  far  more 
important  than  any  merely  literary  one,  and  yet  so 
closely  alHed  with  the  change  in  national  temper 
which  the  period  involved,  that,  in  our  study  of 
national  temper,  we  were  bound  to  give  ourselves 
account  of  it. 

Accordingly  w^e  attempted  first  to  grasp  the  chief 
tenets  of  Calvinism,  the  creed  which  the  Puritans 
believed  to  comprise  the  truth.  To  them,  we 
found,  the  Fall  of  Man,  the  doomed  rebellion 
of  the  human  will,  the  unmerited  mercy  of  salva- 
tion granted  through  Christ  to  God's  elect,  and 
the  consequent  chance  that  any  man  might  find  his 
will  divinely  freed  from  the  just  doom  of  our  race, 
were  no  formal  dogmas.     They  were  dogmas  which 

237 


2s8   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 


-J 


possessed  the  Puritan  imagination,  and  exhausted 
its  power,  with  all  the  certainty  of  supreme  reality. 
Next,  endeavoring  for  the  moment  to  assume  their 
point  of  view,  we  attempted  to  understand  how  the 
world  in  which  the  Puritans  were  placed  presented 
itself  to  their  devout  eyes.  So  presently  we  came  to 
perceive  how  inevitably  there  arose  in  England  a  con- 
scious conflict  between  the  ideals  of  right  and  of 
rights — how,  to  earnest  men,  the  law  of  God  and  the 
laws  of  men  must  have  seemed  sundered  or  sunder- 
ing; and  therefore  how  the  deepest  energies  of  the 
Puritans,  and  all  the  passions  which  in  eariier  days 
had  been  free  to  animate  all  manner  of  expression, 
were  concentrated  in  efforts  to  make  right  and  rights 
agree.  And  finally  we  remarked  that,  though  the 
earlier  phases  of  this  conflict  have  left  little,  if  any, 
trace  w^hich  has  emerged  into  the  lasting  life  of  letters, 
the  founding  of  New  England,  in  the  midst  of  the 
growing  troubles,  may  literally  be  regarded  as  the 
most  concrete  and  permanent  expression  of  Eliza- 
bethan Puritanism.  Instead  of  making  books,  the 
Puritans  of  the  elder  time  unwittingly  made  a  nation, 
which  to  this  day  preserves  immutable  traces  of  their 
spirit. 

This  necessary  digression  from  our  consideration 
of  literature  is  not  yet  finished.  Before  returning  to 
our  true  subject,  we  must  follow  not  only  the  later 
course  of  Puritanism  in  England,  but  also  its  course 
in    that     New^     England,     across    the    seas,     which 


PURITANISM  239 

almost  from  the  very  settlement  was  definitely 
parted  from  the  mother  country.  After  we  have 
considered  these  matters,  and  only  then,  we  shall 
be  free  to  revert  to  literature — our  proper  busi- 
ness together.  Glancing,  with  these  other  matters 
in  mind,  at  the  course  which  literature  took  in  Eng- 
land after  the  Elizabethan  spirit  had  faded,  we  may 
end,  perhaps,  even  though  of  necessity  our  glance 
must  be  hasty,  by  discerning  more  clearly  than  before 
the  fact  which  to  my  mind  seems  most  significant  when 
Englishmen  and  Americans  discuss  their  common  his- 
tory together — namely,  how  the  nation  which  to-day 
is  England  and  the  nation  which  to-day  is  America 
have  come,  for  so  long,  to  diverge. 

In  the  years  when  New  England  was  founded,  about 
the  time  when  King  Charles  came  to  the  throne, 
the  historic  Hfe  of  the  mother  country  was  beginning 
to  move  more  swiftly  than  men  realized.  The  emi- 
grant Puritans  who  withdrew  themselves  to  the 
wilderness  where,  presently,  they  were  to  plant  a 
nation,  left  behind  them  an  England  in  which  their 
creed  and  their  policy  seemed  far  from  dominant. 
One  may  doubt,  indeed,  whether  any  stray  traveller 
to  England  toward  the  end  of  King  James's  reign,  or 
during  the  earlier  days  of  King  Charles  I.,  would 
much  have  remarked,  or  indeed  need  much  have 
noticed,  the  existence  then  of  those  seekers  for  right- 
eousness who  were  destined,  before  long,  to  over- 
throw the  monarchy  for  a  while.    The  kind  of  incident 


240   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

most  apt  to  attract  a  careless  eye  was  that  Prynne's 
"Histriomastix"  cost  him  his  ears,  and  sent  rid- 
ing across  London  a  wonderful  procession  from 
the  Inns  of  Court,  whence  gentlemen  came  to  play 
before  the  King  and  Queen,  in  atonement  for 
this  indiscretion  of  one  among  their  fellows,  the 
most  elaborate  masque  which  as  yet  had  dribbled 
from  the  pen  of  Shirley.  King  Charles  himself,  of 
course,  was  staid  enough  in  his  personal  life;  but, 
amid  the  lax  fashions  of  his  time,  this  feature  of  his 
character  appeared  almost  in  the  light  of  an  eccentric- 
ity. The  court  which  gathered  about  him,  and  the 
lesser  pubHc  which  still  thronged  the  theatres  where  the 
drama  was  sinking  so  deeply  into  its  corruption — the 
dominant  authorities  of  the  Church,  too,  attempting 
to  force  upon  England  external  conformity  in  the 
ritual  beauty  of  holiness, — were  for  the  moment 
the  figures  which  to  careless  observers  must  have 
seemed  most  conspicuous.  And  more  and  more  cer- 
tainly these  figures  were  coming  to  embody  character- 
istics which  marked  them,  in  the  eyes  of  fervent 
Calvinists,  as  children  of  perdition. 

The  course  which  Puritan  feeling  began  to  take 
was  inevitable.  Fancy  yourself,  if  you  can,  some 
honest  Puritan  of  those  days,  convinced  that  no  other 
path  than  that  which  you  were  striving  to  tread  could 
even  lead  toward  salvation — far  less  could  approach 
its  full  and  inefifable  reality.  Then  picture  to  your- 
self the  wrath  with  which  you  would  have  resented 


PURITANISM  241 

the  growingly  intolerant  formalism  of  the  established 
Church — silencing  the  preachers  and  the  lecturers 
from  whose  hps  your  ears  were  thirsting  to  drink  the 
living  truth;  replacing  them  by  rites  in  which  you 
could  perceive  only  the  likeness  of  Popish  mummery 
and  genuflexion;  thrusting  altar-wise  to  the  wall  the 
tables  where  you  held  that  Scripture  bade  you  sit 
at  ease  when  you  would  share  in  the  Lord's  Supper; 
drowning  the  voice  of  heartfelt  prayer  in  the  ritual 
phrases  of  a  conventional  Hturgy,  or  in  the  distracting 
strains  of  ingeniously  interwoven  chants.  Picture  to 
yourself,  too,  the  grievous  indignation  with  which  you 
would  have  watched  the  gay  corruption  of  courtly 
fashion,  and  of  the  lesser  fashion  which  aped  it.  The 
vanities  of  this  earthly  life,  with  which  such  fashion 
seemed  impiously  content,  were  twining  themselves 
into  more  and  more  inextricable  mazes  of  sinful 
intrigue;  and  this  same  godless  fashion  delighted  to 
parody  these  unholy  vanities  in  comedies  which 
it  was  welcome  to  play  before  the  very  eyes  of  your 
ecclesiastical  persecutors — graceless  perverters  of 
their  divine  office. 

As  time  began  to  pass — the  days  gathering  them- 
selves into  weeks,  the  weeks  into  months,  the  months 
into  years — there  would  have  sunk  more  and  more 
deeply  into  your  soul  the  conviction  that  the 
forces  arrayed  against  you  were  all  and  utterly 
evil.  And  long  before  you  had  phrased  to  your- 
self   in    formal    consciousness    the    resolution    which 


242   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

was  bound  to  arise  within  you,  that  resolution  would 
surely  have  become  an  instinctive  part  of  your 
habitual  inner  life.  Even  though  the  human  rights 
of  passing  law  might  foster  and  protect  this  course 
of  evil,  the  everlasting  right,  which  must  finally  sur- 
mount and  control  all  the  rights  of  mere  humanity, 
bade  you  protest  against  the  course  of  earthly  affairs, 
in  the  name  of  the  Lord  on  High.  What  is  more,  if 
your  cry  of  protest  should  awaken  no  answering 
change  of  heart  among  those  who  were  rising  up 
against  you,  why,  next  to  cries  must  come  deeds. 

Yet  if  the  troubles  and  dissensions  which  vexed 
England  had  been  only  matters  of  religion,  of  the 
spirit,  the  course  of  English  history  would  hardly  have 
been  that  which  it  actually  took.  As  everyone 
remembers,  however,  the  whole  question  was  compli- 
cated with  political  troubles  as  well.  Under  Eliza- 
beth, one  may  broadly  say,  the  royal  power  had 
shared  in  the  characteristic  integrity  of  her  time; 
on  the  whole,  its  spirit  had  kept  in  touch  with 
the  spirit  of  the  country.  Under  James  and  Charles 
there  came  a  change.  The  sovereign  found  himself 
more  and  more  at  odds  with  that  powerful  part  of 
the  people  who  were  at  once  sufficiently  advanced  to 
feel  alert  interest  in  public  affairs,  and  yet  not  so  emi- 
nent as  to  be  closely  connected  with  the  life  and  the 
intrigues  of  the  court  or  of  the  higher  politics. 

The  details  of  the  confused  and  increasing  troubles 
which  ensued  are  far  too  intricate  even  for  mention 


PURITANISM  243 

now.  Unsatisfactory  as  generalization  must  be,  we 
are  forced  to  generalize.  In  brief,  to  sum  up  the  his- 
tory which  preceded  the  actual  outbreak  of  Civil 
War,  the  extravagance  and  the  incompetence — one 
may  almost  say  the  extravagant  impotence — of  the 
royal  government  involved  England  in  expenses  far 
beyond  the  national  income.  To  meet  these  expenses 
Parliament  was  again  and  again  called  on  for  unusual 
grants  of  money.  Thereupon  Parliament  began  to 
criticise  the  conduct  of  the  state  with  increasing  bold- 
ness; and  presently  it  went  so  far  as  to  refuse  the 
needful  grants,  except  on  conditions  which  involved, 
on  its  own  part,  a  degree  of  interference  with  the 
conduct  of  the  state  which  the  King  held  revolu- 
tionary. The  King  accordingly  endeavored  to  carry 
on  the  government  without  recourse  to  Parliament, 
and  to  supply  himself  with  the  requisite  funds  by 
means  of  certain  impositions  which  he  honestly  be- 
lieved to  be  based  on  legal  precedent.  The  people  on 
whom  these  impositions  fell,  on  the  other  hand,  were 
disposed  with  equal  honesty  to  believe  the  impositions 
arbitrary,  and  therefore  to  hold  the  King  revolu- 
tionary in  turn.  When  at  last,  accordingly,  after  an 
interval  of  years,  the  summoning  of  new  Parliaments 
proved  unavoidable,  the  bodies  which  assembled,  in 
response  to  the  calls,  turned  out — in  spite  of  the  con- 
ditions which  then  rendered  popular  election  so  far 
from  an  utterance  of  the  voice  of  the  people — to  be 
composed  largely  of  men  who  fervently  believed  that 


244   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

the  course  taken  by  the  royal  authority  had  deeply 
and  dangerously  violated  their  ancestral  rights  as 
Englishmen. 

Taken  by  itself,  like  the  austere  convictions  of  the 
Puritans  taken  by  themselves,  this  political  crisis 
could  hardly  have  led  to  all  which  followed.  But  the 
two  currents  of  ardent  protestant  feeling  tended  to 
merge.  It  is  a  grave  error  to  suppose  that  the  full 
Puritan  spirit,  in  all  its  phases,  took  the  ParHament- 
ary  side,  or  that  all  the  men  who  followed  the  King  in 
the  Civil  Wars  were  free  from  Puritan  taint.  This 
popular  tradition,  however,  comes  near  enough  to  the 
truth  not  to  be  contemptible.  In  fact,  the  section 
of  Parliament  which  soon  began  to  control  its  con- 
duct was  largely  composed  of  men  in  whom  the 
Puritan  spirit  ran  deep.  The  misgovernment  of  the 
King  and  of  his  advisers,  they  presently  held,  had 
violated  the  civil  rights  and  liberties  of  England; 
so  they  impeached  StrafTord.  The  misgovernment 
of  the  Church,  they  presently  held  in  turn,  had  not 
only  violated  the  religious  rights  and  liberties — if 
indeed  at  such  a  moment  anyone  dreamed  of  true 
religious  liberties — which  were  ancestrally  English; 
but  in  so  doing  it  had  violated,  more  impiously  still, 
that  eternal  right  which  is  sanctioned  by  the  will  of 
God;  so  they  sent  Laud,  as  well,  to  the  block.  And 
the  confusion  grew^  ever  worse  confounded. 

Yet  blindly  bewildering  as  the  troublous  history 
is,  one  can  feel  that  on  the  whole  the  men  who  found 


PURITANISM  245 

themselves  forced  into  Parliamentary  leadership  began 
their  work  with  no  intention  of  proceeding  beyond 
the  law.  They  meant,  in  the  beginning,  only  to  main- 
tain the  hereditary  rights  of  Englishmen  and  the 
eternal  right  of  the  Gospel.  The  current  of  history 
whirled  them  onward  unawares.  Before  long,  with 
little  sense  that  they  had  exceeded  their  original  pur- 
pose,— with  small  realization,  it  would  seem,  of  all 
which  they  actually  claimed, — they  began  to  assert 
in  the  name  of  Parliament,  a  degree  of  authority 
which,  once  admitted,  would  amount  to  acknowledged 
Parliamentary  sovereignty,  reducing  royalty  to  an 
empty  name.  This  claim,  of  Parliamentary  sover- 
eignty, was  quite  as  revolutionary  as  any  claim  of 
royalists  that  absolute  and  divine  right  resides  in  the 
person  of  the  King.  Yet,  as  one  tries  to  see  the  Par- 
liamentary Puritans  as  they  saw  themselves,  one  is 
little  apt  to  believe  that  they  ever  suspected  them- 
selves to  be  revolutionists.  To  themselves,  rather, 
they  seemed  only  Englishmen,  unflinchingly  deter- 
mined to  maintain,  to  protect,  and  to  defend  the 
rights  which  had  been  confided  to  them  by  their 
fathers.  In  so  doing,  however,  they  believed  them- 
selves supported  by  a  power  higher  than  any  which 
can  be  derived  from  earth;  as  Christians,  edified  by 
the  inexpressible  and  superficially  distorted  fervor  of 
Calvinistic  imagination,  they  never  doubted  them- 
selves to  be  the  human  repositories  of  divinely 
revealed  truth.    Their  assertion  of  rights  they  believed 


246   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

to  be  sanctioned  by  all  the  omnipotence  of  absolute 
right. 

So  when  ParHamentarianism  almost  unwittingly 
proceeded  to  those  virtual  assertions  of  Parliamentary 
sovereignty  which  inevitably  involved  the  tragedy  of 
the  Civil  Wars,  the  assertions  were  overwhelmingly  ani- 
mated by  all  the  force  of  uncompromising  moral  con- 
viction which  dwelt  in  honest  Puritanism.  Nowadays 
the  dry  logic  of  that  grim  creed  seems  far  from  stir- 
ring, in  the  crabbed  pages  which  record  its  intricacies; 
and  to  unregenerate  ears  the  drawls  or  the  shouts  of 
pious  exhortation  which  excited  Puritan  fervor  must 
always  have  sounded  noisy,  hypocritical  and  canting. 
But  beneath  this  unwinsome  exterior  there  burned, 
in  the  true  Puritans,  ecstatic  fires  of  imaginative 
aspiration.  It  was  still  within  the  hope  of  any  among 
them  that  he  might  be  brought  miraculously  into  that 
reconciled  harmony  with  the  purposes  of  God  from 
which  the  sin  of  Adam  had  threatened  to  exclude  all 
humanity. 

And  so  came  a  sort  of  divine  madness.  These 
men,  or  many  of  the  most  earnest  among  them, 
came  to  believe  that  even  though  they  might  person- 
ally be  lost, — though  they  themselves  might  never 
truly  share  in  the  will  of  God, — they  might  at  least 
recognize  God's  will,  admit  it,  proclaim  it.  They 
came  to  believe,  furthermore,  that,  for  all  the  sins  and 
follies  of  this  world,  good  men — devout  servants  of 
God — could,  if  they  would  make  the  efifort  with  all 


PURITANISM  247 

their  hearts,  impose  some  semblance  of  the  Divine  will 
on  their  erring  fellows.  By  simulating  the  elect,  in 
words  and  deeds  which  now  seem  like  some  holy 
comedy  of  unmeant  hypocrisy,  anyone,  they  appear 
to  have  beheved,  might  at  least  serve  as  an  instru- 
ment of  God's  pleasure;  and  thus,  perhaps,  though 
lost  himself,  he  might  help  to  win  eternal  mercy  for 
his  posterity.  In  religious  discipline,  which,  in  spite 
of  opposition  and  oppression,  these  enthusiasts  had 
been  able  to  control  among  themselves,  their  insist- 
ence on  absolute  right  had  begun  to  restore  what 
they  believed  to  be  a  pristine  purity  of  Christian  wor- 
ship. In  this  purity  of  worship  they  found  at  once 
edification  and  sanction  for  their  growing  faith  that 
they  might  proceed  to  impose  absolute  right  on  mat- 
ters civil  as  well. 

It  is  first  and  chiefly,  no  doubt,  these  ardors 
of  Puritanism  which  reveal  what  was  truly  the 
deepest  passion  of  England  in  that  mid-seventeenth 
century.  Earnest  Englishmen  had  come  passionately 
to  believe  that  the  affairs  of  men  can  be  controlled 
by  that  absolute  right  which  resides  in  the  will  of 
God;  and  when  earnest  men  passionately  cherish 
such  belief  as  this,  it  is  bound  to  involve  a  conse- 
quent determination  that  since  human  affairs  can  be 
so  controlled  they  must  be.  In  this  conviction  and 
determination,  however,  the  Puritans  did  not  stand 
alone.  When  their  ardor  flamed  into  full  revo- 
lutionary assertion  of  Parliamentary  sovereignty,  it 


248   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

was  confronted  with  other  convictions  and  other 
assertions  as  sincere  and  as  devoted  as  their  own. 
The  Royalists — the  Cavaliers,  as  the  fashion  of  liter- 
ature has  come  to  name  them — were  not  blind  con- 
servatives. Rather,  at  their  best,  they  were  men  who 
fervently  believed  that  the  storms  of  the  times  could 
be  weathered  only  by  a  course  widely  different  from 
that  which  Parliament  had  taken.  That  God's  will 
ought  to  be  done,  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven,  all  earnest 
men,  on  either  side,  were  agreed.  The  question  which 
most  deeply  divided  earnest  men  concerned  the  means 
by  which  God  had  chosen  to  indicate  His  will  to  man- 
kind. 

The  Puritans,  as  we  have  seen,  pinned  their  faith 
to  the  Bible,  as  the  Bible  was  interpreted  by 
Calvinistic  theology.  They  turned,  accordingly,  to 
their  godly  preachers  for  guidance  toward  that 
ecstatic  communion  with  divinity  for  which  all  might 
hope,  though  so  few  might  attain  it.  Such  commun- 
ion, once  attained,  meant  not  only  that  those  who 
could  share  it  should  enjoy  the  priceless  boon  of 
salvation;  it  meant,  as  well,  and  for  that  very  reason, 
that  the  human  wills  of  the  regenerate,  in  their  recon- 
ciled harmony  with  the  will  of  God,  were  supremely 
right  in  their  purposes.  Such  a  creed  appeals  very 
powerfully  to  the  kind  of  energetic  men  whom  we  call 
self-reliant ;  and  is  terribly  open  to  the  danger  of  head- 
strong self-assertion,  which  grows  the  more  mischiev- 
ous as  the  devoted  assertors  of  themselves  grow  more 
and  more  apt  to  forget  each  his  essential  peculiarities. 


PURITANISM  249 

There  is  another  kind  of  men,  neither  worse  than  the 
self-rehant  nor  better,  but  different,  who  rely,  for  help 
in  the  struggles  of  this  world,  not  on  themselves,  but  on 
others.  To  such  as  these,  even  though  they  be  as 
willing  as  any  Puritan  to  admit  the  graceless  deprav- 
ity of  humanity,  the  true  voice  of  right — however 
confused  by  the  transitory  errors  of  mankind — is 
uttered  by  no  mere  book,  however  sacred,  nor  yet  by 
the  exasperating  or  edifying  lips  of  any  preacher. 
Rather  it  comes  to  us  through  those  visible  human 
authorities,  of  Church  and  of  State  alike,  to  whom 
God,  in  His  inscrutable  wisdom,  has  bidden  lesser  men 
be  subject.  It  is  not  that  kings  or  bishops  are  sinless 
or  irresponsible.  It  is  rather  that  they  are  God's 
officers,  in  just  such  sense  as  that  in  which  soldiers, 
irrespective  of  their  personal  character,  are  officers 
of  the  governments  which  they  enforce  or  defend. 
And  the  Divine  power  which  commissions  Church  and 
State  is  the  power  which  alone  can  call  them  to 
account.     We  must  be  content  to  let  them : 

God's  the  hand — 
No  earthly  one — which  may  chastise  the  wrongs 
That  royal  sinners  wreak,  whirling  along 
To  their  damnation,  deeper  still  than  ours, 
When  God  shall  ask  them  trembling  how  they  bore 
The  trust  His  chrism  imposed. 

In  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  acci- 
dents of  English  history  had  given  to  the  sovereign 


250   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

a  double  character,  which  made  a  smgularly  direct 
appeal  to  such  temper  as  this.  For  he  was  head 
not  only  of  the  state  but  also  of  the  English  church. 
Accordingly,  the  deeper  and  more  earnest  spirits  who 
supported  the  sovereignty  of  the  King  against  the 
sovereignty  of  Parliament  tended  more  and  more  to 
recognize  in  Charles,  despite  those  personal  weak- 
nesses which  had  so  subtly  shaken  his  authority,  the 
ruler  whom  they  were  bidden  to  serve  not  only  by  the 
laws  of  man,  but  also  by  the  law  of  God.  So  when 
the  Puritans  and  the  Parliamentarians  endeavored 
to  impose  their  authority  on  England,  they  were  met 
by  opponents  as  sincere  as  themselves.  The  Royal- 
ists, the  Cavaliers,  were  less  austere,  less  profoundly 
enthusiastic;  but  their  superficial  frivolity  may  well 
mislead  us  into  a  misunderstanding  as  deep  as  that 
which  has  so  often  been  based  on  the  superficial  cant 
and  grotesqueness  of  the  Puritans.  In  truth,  both 
sides  were  equally  in  earnest.  When  Puritanism 
sought  to  remould  the  laws  and  the  rights  of  England 
into  those  new  forms  which  it  believed  sanctioned  by 
the  Divine  right  set  down  in  Scripture  and  interpreted 
by  the  saints,  it  was  met  by  an  equally  unbending 
determination  that  those  laws  and  rights  should  rather 
be  reduced  to  other  new  forms,  proclaimed  and  sanc- 
tioned by  the  divine  right  inherent  in  the  King. 

Amid  all  the  confusion  of  that  tragic  time  we  can 
constantly  discern  the  outline  of  this  tragic  conflict. 
On  either  side  there  was  plenty  of  human  weakness, 


PURITANISM  251 

plenty  of  open  sin,  plenty  of  such  endless  error  and 
distortion  as  still  implants  in  many  minds  the  con- 
viction that  human  nature  must  be  essentially  wicked. 
Of  a  given  man,  however  earnest,  you  might  often 
be  at  pains  to  guess  on  which  side  he  should  soon  be 
found.  There  were  treasons  in  those  days,  too,  as  in  all 
others;  and  there  were  honestly  despairing  uncertain- 
ties, and  deep  changes  of  heart.  And  beneath  the 
troublous,  bewildering  surface  of  that  tempestuous 
life,  where  the  only  sure  fact  seems  that  the  structure 
of  the  elder  world  was  everywhere  crumbling,  there 
were  surging  historical  forces  as  certain  and  as  mys- 
terious as  those  electric  forces  which  we  are  only  just 
beginning  to  harness.  As  one  reads  the  history  of  those 
seventeenth  century  turmoils,  or  attempts  to  explore 
the  records  on  which  that  history  is  based,  one's  brain 
reels,  like  the  brains  of  those  who  were  striving — for 
the  while  so  vainly — to  bring  order  out  of  the  crash- 
ing chaos.  But  when  one  lays  the  records  down,  and 
strives  by  pondering  to  discern  some  trace  of  the  se- 
cret of  their  teaching,  one  is  apt  to  feel  slowly  defining 
itself  the  verity  of  a  world-old  lesson — yet  a  lesson 
which  men  have  never  yet  learned  so  well  that  it  shall 
serve  their  weakness  in  hours  of  conflict. 

There  is  somewhere  a  half-forgotten  parable,  of  one 
who  saw  God,  and  bowed  his  head,  adoring.  Then 
those  about  him,  whose  eyes  were  blinded,  asked 
wherefore  he  bowed  his  head.  So,  lifting  up  his  face, 
he  strove  to  tell  them  how  he  saw  God.     But  even 


252   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

as  he  strove,  his  eyes  were  blinded;  and  he  saw  God 
no  more.  So  he  could  not  make  them  true  answer. 
And  as  for  them,  they  could  not  perceive  that  there 
was  any  truth  in  him. 

What  fell  out  the  parable  does  not  tell.  It  is  enough 
that  one  who  could  lose  himself  in  ecstatic  adoration 
could  find  no  words  which  should  help  others  to  share 
in  such  mystic  afflations  as  for  a  glorious  instant  of 
eternity  had  suffused  his  being;  nor  could  those  others 
understand  how  this  strange  parting  from  the  rest  of 
one  among  their  fellows  could  mean  anything  else 
than  the  dumb  or  stammering  madness  of  its  outward 
aspect.  And  indeed  the  utterances  of  sincere  enthu- 
siasm are  really  tinged  with  some  semi-divine  mad- 
ness or  folly.  When  men  are  even  stirred  by  faith  in 
the  absolute  right  of  their  cause, — still  more,  when 
such  faith  possesses  and  irradiates  their  whole  consci- 
ousness,— they  seem  fatally  prevented  from  the  knowl- 
edge that  the  range  of  truth  is  infinite,  illimitable.  A 
little  of  it,  and  perhaps  more  than  a  little,  they  per- 
ceive in  all  the  celestial  intensity  of  its  glory.  But 
when  they  honestly  and  passionately  assert  that  this 
truth  which  they  perceive  is  the  whole  truth,  all  their 
honesty  cannot  keep  them  from  uttering  the  beginning 
of  implicit  and  insidious  falsehood,  the  more  danger- 
ous for  its  very  sincerity.  They  have  fallen  into  the 
blinding  error  of  denial  that  others  than  they  can  per- 
ceive any  aspect  of  truth  at  all.  It  is  the  old  story  of 
the  gold  and  silver  shield. 


PURITANISM  253 

Shrewd  old  Increase  Mather — the  greatest  of  the 
native  Puritans  of  Massachusetts — learned  this  lesson 
well.  Like  many  devout  men  of  his  day,  he  was 
rewarded  more  than  once,  after  long  fasting  and 
vigil,  by  admission  to  what  seemed  to  him  the  actual 
presence  of  God.  And  at  first  he  would  sometimes 
try  to  proclaim  the  messages  with  which,  in  these  mys- 
tic interviews,  God  had  charged  him.  But  later  he 
refrained  from  confiding  them  even  to  the  pages  of 
his  private  diaries,  because  experience  had  taught  him 
that  "the  Flights  of  a  Soul  rapt  up  into  a  more  Inti- 
mate Conversation  with  Heaven,  are  such  as  cannot 
be  exactly  Remembered  with  the  Happy  partakers 
of  them." 

Few  men  of  any  time,  however,  have  been  able  thus  to 
season  enthusiasm  with  prudence.  So  when  Royal- 
ists and  Parliamentarians,  Anglicans  and  Puritans, 
Cavaliers  and  Roundheads,  faced  one  another  in 
mutual  defiance,  neither  could  see  much  more  than 
the  rift  between  them,  widening  into  the  pit  of  de- 
struction into  which  the  holy  fervor  of  each  side 
believed  that  eternal  righteousness  bade  it  drive  its 
adversaries.  For  the  moment  we  may  well  neglect 
all  but  those  earnest  spirits  who  were  impelled,  despite 
themselves,  to  one  side  or  the  other.  These  earnest 
spirits  could  discern  only  that  they  themselves  were 
striving,  with  all  their  hearts,  for  the  realization  of 
noble  ideals;  that  they  were  ready  to  give  their  all 
for  the  service  of  that  God  whose  will  must  be  done 


254   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven,  in  Church  and  in  State  ahke. 
Whoever  opposed  them,  the  Cavaliers  believed  as 
profoundly  as  the  Puritans,  opposed  the  will  of  God; 
whoever  opposes  the  will  of  God  works  the  will  of  the 
Devil. 

And  yet,  now  that  the  centuries  are  beginning  to 
run  their  later  course,  we  can  perceive  how  beneath 
their  deep  and  passionate  misunderstanding,  enhanced 
and  intensified  by  every  manner  of  outward  accident, 
there  glowed  in  the  hearts  of  earnest  men,  on  either 
side,  a  common  and  a  noble  aspiration.  All  alike 
beHeved  that  the  times  had  waxed  very  evil;  that 
right  and  rights  were  no  longer  in  any  manner  of 
accord;  that  the  working  of  human  laws,  whether  in 
Church  or  in  State,  had  reached  a  pass  where  divine 
law  must  remould  them.  Yet  all  alike  were  deeply 
imbued  with  that  conservative  instinct  which  is  the 
vital  strength  of  English  blood;  no  one  dreamed  of 
wantonly  neglecting  the  past  of  that  English  nation 
to  which  all  meant  to  be  loyal.  Each  side  sincerely 
believed  that  it  could  rest  its  case  securely  on  what 
the  phrase  of  their  day  vaguely  called  the  fundamental 
law  of  England.  In  turning  to  this  fundamental  law, 
the  while,  each  side  seems  passionately  to  have  for- 
gotten the  fundamental  fact  which  had  made  English 
law,  and  which  makes  it  still,  so  admirably  potent. 
Each  alike  appealed  to  fundamental  law  for  precedents 
and  principles  which  should  confirm  the  authority  by 
virtue  of  which  each  in  its  separate  way  desired  at  once 


PURITANISM  255 

honestly  and  arbitrarily,  to  change  the  course  of  his- 
tory. Neither  side  paused  to  consider  what  the  course 
of  history  had  actually  been. 

Now  the  customs  of  men,  as  they  embody  them- 
selves in  the  laws  under  which,  in  any  given  age, 
human  society  can  be  governed,  are  deeply  complex 
things,  whose  origin  we  must  always  seek  in  ancestral 
practice.  Long  forgotten  though  such  ancestral 
practice  be,  and  often  distorted  by  use  or  disuse  almost 
beyond  recognition,  it  may  no  more  be  neglected  by 
those  who  would  beneficently  direct  public  affairs, 
than  the  constitution  of  a  patient  may  be,  by  a  physi- 
cian who  is  trying  to  help  or  to  cure  him.  The 
noblest  reformer  who  attempts  to  make  right  control 
the  world,  by  arbitrarily  changing  the  customs  and 
the  ancestral  rights  of  any  society,  is  doomed  to  tragic 
disappointment.  You  may  extirpate  a  race  or  a  na- 
tion, but  if  you  spare  a  drop  of  its  blood,  or  a  gleam 
of  its  spirit,  you  can  control  it  only  by  intuitive  or 
cunning  recognition  of  its  organism.  The  historic 
force  which  gives  life  to  peoples  must  be  continuous; 
new  rights  and  customs  must  spring  from  the  rights 
and  customs  of  old.  In  moments  of  national  passion, 
earnest  men,  believing  with  honest  folly  that  they 
know  what  absolute  right  is,  may  succeed,  for  a  while, 
in  imposing  some  semblance  thereof  on  the  rights  of 
those  who  for  the  moment  chance  to  be  their  sub- 
jects. But  as  soon  as  their  merely  physical  force 
begins  to  relax,  the  distorted  stream  of  national  life 


256   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

will  swerve  back,  and  its  onrush  will  sweep  the  divine 
madmen  away. 

So  when,  in  that  mid-seventeenth  century,  Cava- 
liers and  Puritans  alike  appealed  to  the  fundamental 
law  of  England,  neither  of  them  seem  even  to 
have  suspected  how  the  true  strength  of  that 
law  had  resided  in  its  power  of  flexibly  adapting 
itself,  as  it  adapts  itself  to-day,  both  in  Eng- 
land and  in  our  continental  Union  beyond  the 
seas,  to  the  slowly  and  surely  changing  needs  and 
conditions  of  men.  Each  side  fell  into  the  error  of 
believing  that  some  manner  of  legislation — whether 
the  decrees  of  King  and  Council,  or  the  votes  of  a  Par- 
liament which  virtually  expelled  its  own  majority — 
could  force  their  national  history  into  a  course  different 
from  that  in  which  historic  force  was  tending.  Each 
fancied  that  it  could  supplant  a  system  of  legal  rights 
— strong  from  its  foundation  in  national  life,  from  its 
adequacy  to  the  needs  of  men, — by  a  new  system 
which  need  find  its  sanction  only  in  that  eternal  right 
which  emanates  from  divinity. 

We  have  lingered  so  long  over  these  generaliza- 
tions concerning  the  period  which  marks  the  diverg- 
ence of  our  national  ways,  English  and  American, 
that  we  have  little  time  left  for  the  more  palpable 
realities  of  historic  fact.  We  can  hardly  name  even 
a  few  of  the  chief  among  them :  Short  Parliament  and 
Long;  the  Civil  Wars;  the  Westminster  Assembly;  the 
execution  of  the  King — crime  if  you  will,  almost  cer- 


PURITANISM  257 

tainly  a  folly,  but  more  certainly  still  an  act  of 
supreme  devotion;  the  paralyzing  wrangles  of  the 
Commonwealth;  the  tyranny  of  the  Protectorate; 
the  futile  Instrument  of  Government;  and  whatever 
else  came  before  the  acquiescence  of  the  Restoration. 
But  by  this  time  we  can  begin  to  understand  what 
all  this  confusion  came  to  signify  among  English- 
men. 

When  the  Civil  Wars  began,  England  was  still  in 
a  state  of  such  national  youth  that  all  men  believed 
rights  to  be  matters  which  could  be  controlled  by  a 
dominant  assertion  of  right.  Both  sides  attempted 
so  to  control  them.  The  effort  led  only  to  a  turbu- 
lence which  seemed  more  and  more  destructive.  So 
by  and  by  came  a  despairing  or  a  cynical  pause. 
Whatever  enthusiasts  might  assert  in  the  name  of 
right,  practical  men  came  to  feel,  rights  were  too 
precious  for  any  further  neglect.  In  rights  lay  the 
true  safety  of  the  nation;  let  right  rave  as  it  would, 
rights  must  be  asserted  and  preserved. 

The  form  in  which  English  rights  have  been  subse- 
quently asserted  and  preserved,  no  doubt,  has  not  been 
quite  that  in  which  they  found  themselves  before  the 
troubles.  Revolutions  are  apt  to  end  not  in  conquest 
but  in  compromise.  So,  speaking  broadly  as  ever,  we 
may  agree  that  from  the  time  when  King  Charles  II. 
came  back  to  his  throne  the  actual  sovereignty  of  Eng- 
land has  tended  more  and  more  to  reside  in  Parliament, 
which  constitutionally  expresses  the  will  of  the  nation. 


258   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

while  the  form  of  sovereignty  has  been  maintained 
by  the  King,  whose  actual  power  has  slowly  decreased 
with  the  passing  of  time.  This  compromise,  this 
acknowledged  separation  of  the  fact  of  sovereignty 
from  its  semblance,  has  on  the  whole  persisted  from 
the  Restoration  to  this  day.  And  throughout  that 
time  the  English  nation,  taught  and  alarmed  by  the 
terrible  experience  of  those  seventeenth  century  years, 
has  dreaded,  beyond  all  things  else  in  public  matters, 
the  control  of  established  order  by  abstract  principle. 
In  which  mood — a  mood,  I  believe,  as  evident  in  the 
reintegrating  literary  expression  of  the  later  seven- 
teenth century  as  it  is  in  political  history — we  may 
definitely  discern  the  characteristic  which  has  chiefly 
made  the  national  temper  of  England  since  the  Com- 
monwealth a  different,  and  a  less  youthful,  thing  than 
that  national  temper  was  before  the  Civil  Wars. 

Now  the  fact,  it  seems  to  me,  which  has  chiefly 
marked  the  difference  between  England  and  our 
New  England,  I  might  better  say  our  whole 
America,  across  the  seas,  is  the  fact  that  no  such 
change  as  this  was  ever  forced,  by  historic  circum- 
stance, on  the  pristine  temper  of  the  emigrant  Puri- 
tans. There  was  never  a  temper  much  less  tolerant 
than  that  which  they  implanted  at  first  in  their  conti- 
nent of  forest  and  wilderness.  They  cared  as  little 
for  abstract  liberty  as  Strafford  cared,  or  Laud,  or 
Charles  himself.  They  dealt  with  Antinomians  and 
Quakers    as    summarily    as    any    tyranny   ever    dealt 


PURITANISM  259 

with  rebellion.  But,  by  a  strange  paradox,  the 
conviction  which  they  held  thus  intolerantly  was 
a  self-reliant  conviction  in  which  the  germs  of  free- 
dom to  come  lay  implicitly  hidden.  From  the  begin- 
ning they  were  strong  and  united  in  their  Calvinistic 
faith  that  human  rights  must  be  controlled  by  that 
divine  right  which  springs  from  no  Kings  or  Bishops, 
but  straight  from  the  spirit  of  God  Himself,  as  that 
spirit  is  imparted  to  the  newly  harmonized  will  of  the 
saints.  It  was  their  fortune  to  be  confronted,  all  in 
common,  with  the  brute  force  of  still  unconquered 
Nature,  and  with  the  hovering  presence  of  common 
enemies — French  and  Indian.  From  the  beginning, 
therefore,  their  common  tasks  and  dangers  tended 
to  strengthen  their  common  faith  by  all  the  fel- 
lowship of  common  interests  and  common  duties. 
So  all  the  while  that  the  course  of  history  in 
England  was  changing  and  exacerbating  the  character 
of  English  Puritanism,  the  forces  which  were  at  work 
in  New  England  were  tending  rather  to  preserve  and 
to  define  the  Puritanism  of  the  elder  time. 

Then  by  and  by,  as  the  fathers  of  New  England 
sank  to  their  rest,  and  their  children  came  to  dwell 
in  their  places,  the  ideals  which  the  fathers  had 
brought  from  their  Elizabethan  fatherland,  where  the 
presence  of  an  historic  past  was  so  soon  to  prove  them 
revolutionary,  began  to  acquire  across  seas  the  ineffable 
sanction  of  reverenced  tradition.  And  thus  America 
came  to  cherish  its  own  tradition,  its  own  spiritual 


26o   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

and  historic  continuity,  which  persists  even  to  this 
day.  The  old  Puritan  paradox  of  ideahty  behind  and 
above  law  is  strong  in  America  still,  strengthened 
by  three  centuries  of  ancestral  faith.  The  changes 
of  the  years  have  as  yet  done  little  more  than  to  vary 
its  aspect  and  its  utterance;  they  have  only  just  begun 
sadly  to  mature  its  youthful  spirit.  For  it  is  only 
when  a  nation  grows  into  all  the  dense  and  populous 
complexity  of  wealth  and  power  that  the  wisdom  of 
experience  begins  to  force  on  men  the  lesson  which 
England  had  to  learn  more  than  two  hundred  years 
ago:  in  this  world  of  ours,  if  nations  are  to  live, 
they  must  seek  the  right  chiefly  through  the  rights 
by  which  alone  national  life  may  be  preserved. 

Long  ago,  of  course,  America  had  inevitably 
developed  certain  national  customs  which  in  truth 
amount  to  a  system  of  rights  peculiarly  its  own.  In 
the  unnoticed  divergence  of  these  from  the  rights 
which  had  existed  or  which  were  developed  in 
England  may  be  found  the  secret  of  the  mutual  mis- 
understandings which  sundered  us  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  When  the  New  England  Puritans  made  their 
way  across  the  sea,  all  Puritans  alike  were  agreed  on 
hardly  anything  more  definite  than  that  rights  must 
be  sanctioned  by  right.  In  England,  as  we  have  seen, 
this  conviction  soon  developed  into  a  claim  of  Parlia- 
mentary sovereignty.  To  New  England,  such  a  claim 
was  totally  foreign.  There,  to  be  sure,  they  soon 
developed  a  system  of  self-government;  but  this  sys- 


PURITANISM  261 

tem  sprung  from  an  endeavor,  to  use  words  attributed 
to  John  Cotton,  "after  a  theocracy,  as  near  as  might 
be  to  that  which  was  the  glory  of  Israel."  From 
this,  in  the  end,  arose  something  like  a  democratic 
tradition;  but  Americans  never  developed  a  tradi- 
tional sense  that  the  Parliament  of  England  was  in 
any  sense  their  rightful  sovereign.  Parliamentary 
sovereignty  had  been  no  part  of  the  political  creed 
held  by  the  emigrant  fathers;  and  when,  in  1775, 
America  rose  in  open  rebellion  against  this  sover- 
eignty, it  was  opposing  a  claim  which,  to  its  own  tra- 
ditions, seemed  as  strangely  revolutionary  as  the 
assertions  of  absolute  Parliamentary  power  seemed 
to  the  adherents  of  King  Charles  I.  Puritan  though 
the  ancestral  temper  of  America  was,  it  was  never 
quite  of  the  Parliamentary  type. 

It  is  not  long  since  an  accomplished  English  student 
of  history,  examining  for  the  first  time  the  details  of 
seventeenth  century  New  England,  remarked,  as  what 
surprised  him  most,  that  these  Yankee  Puritans  seemed, 
throughout  the  century,  almost  Elizabethan  still.  At  a 
glance,  one  could  detect  few^  men  of  the  later  type; 
Roger  Williams  perhaps,  and  John  Wheelwright,  who 
were  exiled  from  Massachusetts ;  Sir  Henry  Vane  and 
Hugh  Peters,  who  soon  found  their  way  back  to  the 
mother  country.  What  was  thus  true  of  seventeenth 
century  New  England  has  remained  true  of  America 
ever  since.  To  this  day  the  American  vestiges  of 
Puritan  spirit  are  Elizabethan  still — springing  straight 


262   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

from  the  integral  elder  days  which  nurtured  as  well 
the  imaginative  masterpieces  of  poetry  and  of  the 
drama. 

We  have  strayed  far  and  long  from  literature. 
Yet  if  we  keep  in  mind  the  reason  why  we  agreed  to 
consider  literature  together,  we  may  feel  ourselves 
justified.  What  we  have  been  trying  to  discern, 
through  literature,  is  the  national  temper  of  England, 
as  revealed  there  during  the  century  of  its  most  con- 
spicuous recorded  change.  So  at  first  we  tried  to 
define  for  ourselves  the  temper  of  English  literature 
in  the  superb  Elizabethan  integrity  with  which  the 
seventeenth  century  began.  Then  we  traced  the  dis- 
integrating drama  to  its  decline;  then  w^e  traced  the 
other  kinds  of  poetry  in  their  parallel  course  of 
luxuriant  decadence;  then  we  considered  the  more 
free  course,  the  while,  of  lasting  prose,  not  yet 
subject  to  the  mastery  of  benumbing  standards. 
And  everywhere,  in  poetry  and  in  prose  alike,  we 
found  ourselves  left,  as  it  were,  in  a  world  apart. 
The  various  kinds  of  literature  which  had  begun 
by  expressing  in  common  a  sense  of  integral  and 
passionate  national  life  had  passed  into  more  widely 
separate  forms  which  express,  at  their  best,  the 
experiences  of  individual  solitude — now  fervent,  now 
contemplative,  now  only  prettily  fantastic.  The  ques- 
tion of  whither  the  passion  of  the  elder  time  had 
betaken  itself  was  forced  upon  us.  In  answering  it 
we  could  not  avoid  our  attempt  to  define  the  aspects 


PURITANISM  263 

of  English  temper  which  inevitably  ensued  from  the 
passionate  growth  of  Puritan  Calvinism. 

In  fact,  the  fierce  contests  which  arose  from  this 
growth  absorbed  the  passionate  energies  of  active 
men.  You  must  seek  the  traces  of  them  elsewhere 
than  in  literature — in  sermons  and  the  like,  in  pam- 
phlets of  acrimonious  controversy,  in  more  grave  and 
formal  discussions  of  human  rights  and  of  divine  right, 
in  speeches,  in  letters,  in  the  endless  authorities  con- 
cerning intrigue  and  warfare  from  which  masters  of 
historical  wisdom  and  method  are  still  trying  to  ex- 
tract the  outline  of  the  truth.  Our  business  has  not 
been  to  unbury,  under  pretence  that  they  are  htera- 
ture,  the  bewildering  writings  in  which  the  men  of 
those  troublous  times  passionately  recorded  the  facts, 
or  attempted,  each  in  his  own  way,  to  set  forth  the 
meaning  of  the  passing  moments.  We  have  only  been 
trying,  by  an  imaginative  effort  of  our  own,  to  feel 
rather  than  to  know  what  this  clash  of  national  discord 
was  like.  We  have  been  trying  to  simplify  the 
extremes  of  its  emotion  until  we  might  begin  sympa- 
thetically to  understand  the  forces  which  for  a  while 
distracted  England. 

In  our  effort  to  understand  the  spiritual  environ- 
ment of  men  in  that  mid-century,  we  have  at  least 
found  a  reason  why  the  chief  note  of  literature  during 
those  days  should  have  been  a  note  of  personal  soli- 
tude. When  the  world  is  ablaze,  only  those  can 
express  themselves  who  stand  aside.     The  histories 


264   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

of  these  troublous  times  all  tell  us  how  the  London 
tradesman  Ferrers  betook  himself  from  the  warring 
world  to  the  gentle  retirement  of  Little  Gidding, 
where — apart  from  the  growing  tumults,  coming  and 
to  come — he  worshipped  God  in  the  beauty  of  holi- 
ness, separating  himself  from  all  but  willing  disciples, 
in  such  temper  as  the  Church  of  Rome  rewards 
with  canonization.  It  was  partly  Little  Gidding  which 
inspired  the  devout  retirement  to  simple  duties  which 
crowned  the  life  of  George  Herbert,  and  which 
breathes  its  serenity  through  the  holy  books  his  last 
years  have  left  us.  From  the  same  sources  sprang 
the  ecstatic  mysticism  of  the  Anglican  Vaughan,  and 
the  burning  fervor  which  Crawshaw  could  quench 
only  in  the  full  flood  of  communion  with  Rome.  The 
same  years  brought  Thomas  Browne,  amid  the  simple 
duties  of  his  unconsecrated  activities,  to  the  mood 
which  gives  lasting  and  gentle  life  to  the  earlier  utter- 
ances of  his  prose.  And  Herrick,  the  while,  in  his 
Devonshire  personage,  was  content  to  make  his  life 
pleasant,  so  long  as  the  times  would  suffer,  with  those 
dainty  verses  which  are  still  the  most  delicate  flower 
sprung  from  the  sturdy  stock  of  Ben  Jonson. 

There  are  other  literary  remains  from  these  times 
on  which  we  can  hardly  touch.  During  that  half 
century  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury  lived  that  Hfe  of 
the  elder  time  so  pleasantly  recorded  in  his  Auto- 
biography. To  the  same  period  belongs  the  life 
of    Colonel    Hutchinson,     which     shows    how    irre- 


PURITANISM  265 

sistibly  a  man  who  ardently  loved  the  gentle  graces 
of  culture  might  find  himself  drawn  by  convic- 
tion to  the  side  of  the  Puritans.  In  those  same  days 
Richard  Baxter  lived  that  life  of  humbler  Puritanism 
which  bore  fruit  in  his  "Saint's  Rest" — a  work  of 
spiritual  consolation  not  yet  laid  aside  by  the  de- 
vout, and  perhaps  the  most  typical  expression  of 
the  Puritan  spirit  we  have  been  trying  to  define. 
To  the  same  days,  too,  belong  most  of  the  lives 
later  recorded  by  Izaak  Walton  in  those  biogra- 
phies which  men  who  love  letters  will  always  love  to 
read.  From  the  same  days  as  well  came  the  copious 
religious  verses  of  Wither,  and  those  quaint  common- 
places of  Francis  Quarles,  and  of  other  writers  of 
emblems  and  the  like,  in  which  simple  folk  took  such 
deep,  prolonged  satisfaction.  We  might  long  go  on, 
adding  name  after  name  to  the  worthy  list. 

And  yet,  when  the  last  was  added,  one  chief  fact 
would  still  emerge,  as  that  which  we  must  surely 
remember.  Above,  beyond,  beneath  all  else,  the  fact 
which  awakened  and  absorbed  national  passion  was 
the  progress  toward  its  temporary  dominance  of 
sombrely  ecstatic  Puritanism.  And  as  Puritanism 
grew  insistent  in  its  assertions,  there  was  forced 
upon  it,  with  the  struggle  for  earthly.  Parliamentary 
sovereignty,  a  sore  experience,  which  exacerbated 
its  temper  and  its  expression  in  every  form.  From 
this  exacerbation.  New  England,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  spared.     But  in  England,  the  typical  Puritans 


266   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

of  the  mid-seventeenth  century  had  come  to  differ 
from  the  Puritans  of  EHzabethan  times. 

It  is  a  happy  chance  that  among  these  mid-cen- 
tury EngHsh  Puritans  may  be  counted  the  one  man 
of  that  period  who  is  incontestably  great  in  Hterature. 
This,  of  course,  is  Milton.  Like  all  great  men,  he 
was  not  only  great,  but  he  was  a  man  of  his 
time  as  well.  In  turning  to  him  now,  we  may  accord- 
ingly find  justification  for  these  preliminary  consider- 
ations of  what  came  before  him  and  of  what  sur- 
rounded him.  For  they  may  perhaps  help  us  to 
understand  him  a  little  better  than  of  old ;  and,  at  the 
same  time,  our  consideration  of  him  may  perhaps  help 
us  to  understand  a  little  better  than  of  old  the  aspects 
of  national  temper  which  we  are  trying  to  define 
together. 


X 

MILTON  BEFORE  THE  CIVIL  WARS 

It  is  a  commonplace  that  Milton's  career  naturally 
divides  itself  into  three  parts:  his  early  years,  when 
he  was  preparing  himself  for  his  life-work;  the  mid- 
period  of  his  life  when — almost  forsaking  poetry — 
he  threw  himself  passionately  into  politics  and  the 
like,  and  by  prose  writings  endeavored  to  influence 
and  to  mould  public  opinion;  and  the  sad  retirement 
of  his  blind  later  solitude,  when  he  produced  the 
great  epic  and  the  formal  drama  in  which  he  summed 
up,  as  best  he  might,  the  truths  which  experience 
had  taught  him.  To  each  of  these  periods  we  shall 
attend  in  turn;  but  we  shall  dwell  chiefly  on  the  first. 

The  facts  of  his  Hfe  need  not  detain  us  long;  they 
are  accessible  in  any  books  of  reference.  He  was 
born,  in  the  heart  of  London,  in  the  year  1608.  His 
father,  the  son  of  an  Elizabethan  Catholic,  had  be- 
come deeply  Puritan  in  conviction;  but  seems  to  have 
found  no  antagonism  between  Puritanism  and  cult- 
ure, and  was  particularly  devoted  to  the  art  of  music. 

The  son,  a  child  of  remarkably  dehcate  beauty,  in- 

267 


268   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

herited  both  the  seriousness  of  temper  which  underlay 
his  father's  Puritanism  and  the  delight  in  beauty 
which  underlay  his  father's  culture.  He  was  a  great 
lover  of  books  from  infancy;  and  when  he  went  to 
school  he  seems  occasionally  to  have  been  impatient, 
not  because  he  was  expected  to  work,  but  because 
he  already  knew  more  than  many  of  his  pedantic 
masters.  From  school  he  went  to  Christ's  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  remained  seven  years.  For 
the  next  six  years  or  so  he  lived  with  his  father, 
who  had  retired  to  the  Buckinghamshire  country. 
Throughout  these  years,  both  of  study  and  of  retire- 
ment, he  was  faithful  to  his  serious  purpose  that  he 
should  be  a  poet,  and  that  to  be  a  true  poet  he  must  make 
his  life  a  true  poem.  During  these  years  he  produced 
the  few  but  admirable  masterpieces  which  are  com- 
monly described  as  his  early  works.  Then,  for  a  year 
or  more,  he  went  abroad,  chiefly  to  Italy,  where  he 
was  cordially  received,  as  an  Englishman  of  con- 
spicuous culture,  by  the  literary  society  of  the  time — 
a  society  now  remembered  outside  of  Italy  mostly 
because  it  was  so  civil  to  Milton.  Then,  probably 
stirred  by  news  of  the  increasing  public  troubles  at 
home,  he  returned  to  England,  and  settled  for  a  while 
in  London,  where  he  took  his  nephews  as  pupils,  and 
sundry  others.  And  here — an  accomplished  and 
scholarly  tutor,  who  had  published  a  few  stray  poems 
and  had  written  a  few  more — we  shall  leave  him  for 
a  while,  at  about  the  year  1640. 


MILTON  269 

Throughout  these  years  he  had  shown  marked 
personal  characteristics.  The  tradition  that  his  Cam- 
bridge nickname  was  the  "Lady  of  Christ's,"  pre- 
serves memory  not  only  of  his  delicate,  almost  femi- 
nine youthful  beauty,  but  also  of  his  moral  fastidious- 
ness. His  traditional  Puritanism  apparently  took 
the  form  of  a  personal  purity,  at  once  instinctive  and 
deliberate,  such  as  was  more  conspicuous  in  the  early 
seventeenth  century  than  it  might  have  been  at  some 
more  sober  and  restrained  period.  The  sense  of  duty 
inseparable  from  his  Puritanism  impelled  him  the 
while  to  an  unusual  degree  of  formal  scholarship; 
and  filled  him  with  conviction  that  if  he  were  to  follow 
the  traditionally  consecrated  vocation  of  poet,  he 
must  consecrate  himself  to  his  purpose. 

Most  of  his  letters  preserved  from  this  period  are  in 
Latin,  many  of  them  in  Latin  verse.  In  one  epistolary 
elegy  which  he  wrote  at  twenty-one  or  thereabouts,  he 
touches  specifically  on  this  opinion.  Poets  who  are  to 
sing  of  trivial  matters — of  love  and  the  beauties  of  pass- 
ing life, — he  says,  may  inspire  themselves  with  earthly 
stimulant — with  wine  and  the  graces  of  laughing  girls. 
But  he  who  would  tell  "of  wars  and  of  Heaven,  .  .  . 
of  pious  heroes,  and  leaders  half-divine,  .  .  .  must 
live  sparely,  after  the  manner  of  Pythagoras,  the 
Samian  teacher.^  .  .  .  His  youth  must  be  chaste  and 
void  of  offence;  his  manners  strict,  his  hands  without 

^  lUe  quidem  parce,  Samii  pro  more  magistri, 

Vivat. 


270   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

stain.^  .  .  .  For  the  bard  is  sacred  to  the  gods ;  he 
is  their  priest;  mysteriously  from  his  Hps  and  his 
breast  he  breathes  Jove."  ^  This  came  some  twenty 
years  before  his  more  mature  assertion  of  the  same 
principles  in  English:  "He  who  would  not  be 
frustrate  of  his  hope  to  write  well  hereafter  in 
laudable  things  ought  himself  to  be  a  true  poem, 
.  .  .  not  presuming  to  sing  high  praises  of 
heroic  men  or  famous  cities  unless  he  have  in  himself 
the  experience  and  practice  of  all  that  which  is  praise- 
worthy." 

In  these  familiar  passages  you  can  feel,  better  per- 
haps than  in  more  recondite  ones,  the  temper  of  Milton's 
earlier  days.  Though  his  Puritanism  had  all  the  ear- 
nestness imaginable,  it  was  not  quickly  stirred  to  the 
point  of  acrimony  and  controversy.  And  his  methods 
of  expression  were  far  from  such  austere  disdain  of 
earthly  beauties  as  made  conventional  Puritans  gro- 
tesque. Every  line  of  his  Latin,  brimming  with  the 
allusions  and  mannerisms  of  youthful  classical  lore, 
not  yet  hardened  into  pedantry,  bespeaks  a  degree  of 
formal  culture  which  normally  careless  youths  are  apt 
to  think  priggish.  What  saves  it  is  your  conviction 
that  it  is  not  affected,  but  genuine;  and  that  this 
genuineness  involves  a  really  loving  care  for  austerely 
luxuriant  beauty  of  form. 

*  Additur  huic  scelerisque  vacuus  et  casta  juventus 

Et  rigidi  mores,  et  sine  labe  manus. 

*  Diis  etenim  sacer  est  vates,  divumque  sacerdos, 

Spirat  et  occultum  pectus  et  ora  Jovem. 


MILTON  271 

Such  a  nature,  with  such  surrounding  and  such 
deHberate  purpose,  was  bound  to  be  deeply  influenced 
by  the  learning  and  the  literature  which  surrounded 
it.  To  understand  the  earlier  poems  of  Milton,  we 
must  accordingly  glance  at  their  historic  environment 
— at  the  learning  and  the  literature  which  suffused  the 
air  he  breathed. 

When  we  last  touched  on  English  learning,  we 
were  concerned  mostly  with  Bacon  and  with  Bur- 
ton— born  Elizabethans,  men  of  the  elder  generation. 
In  their  youth,  the  Renaissance  had  not  lost  the  vigor 
of  freshness;  when  Milton's  time  came,  learning  had 
begun  to  pass  into  the  rigidity  of  traditional  culture. 
Yet  the  classics  were  still  far  from  the  condition 
which  makes  them  seem  so  futile  to  many  modern 
minds.  They  had  been  mustered,  and  duly  enrolled 
in  their  stately  companies;  these  companies  had  not 
yet  stiffened  again  into  the  marble  rigidity  of  their 
second  death.  To  earnest  students  the  languages  of 
antiquity  were  still  presented  not  as  curious  objects 
for  scientific  investigation,  but  as  vehicles  in  which 
the  men  of  ancient  times  had  made  utterances  eternally 
significant  to  those  elect  who  could  be  received  into 
communion  with  the  spirit  of  learning.  A  scholar 
nowadays,  at  least  in  America,  is  often  content  when 
he  is  sure  of  his  grammar  and  his  archaeology;  the 
elder  scholarship  held  rather  that  its  first  business 
was  to  know,  somewhat  as  we  know  living  men, 
those  greater  fellow-beings  of  the  past  whose  utter- 


272   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

ances  have  become  immortal.  The  more  of  them 
whom  you  thus  knew,  the  more  to  whom  you  could 
easily  and  surely  allude,  the  wiser  and  better  man 
you  would  be. 

To  master  such  allusions,  meanwhile,  and  to  as- 
similate the  spirit  of  the  ancients,  there  was  no 
other  means  so  sure  as  conscientious  imitation  of 
their  utterance.  Amid  the  confusion  of  modern 
tongues,  the  diuturnity  of  the  ancient  languages 
afiforded  a  constant  vehicle  in  which,  even  though 
man  might  not  quite  speak  to  man,  learning  could 
forever  discourse  to  learning.  So,  by  Milton's  time, 
there  had  arisen,  as  a  definite  custom,  that  pleasant 
scholarly  practice  of  attempting  to  express  the  facts 
of  modern  life  in  the  terms  of  antiquity.  Milton 
seems  to  have  taken  eagerly  to  this  accomplishment. 
You  shall  seek  far  for  more  typical  examples  of  it 
than  you  may  find  in  the  Latin  letters  and  the  Latin 
verses  of  his  earlier  years.  He  accepted  the  conven- 
tions of  his  time,  but  he  did  not  let  them  master  him; 
he  had  the  force  to  make  some  gleam  of  his  individu- 
ality shine,  now  and  again,  through  the  formal  phrases 
of  his  academic  Latin. 

On  what  he  drew  from  modern  literatures,  we  have 
even  less  time  to  touch.  It  is  enough  to  say  that 
among  modern  literatures  the  earhest,  and  so  in  his 
time  the  most  deeply  respectable,  was  the  Italian; 
and  that  he  was  able,  when  he  journeyed  in  Italy, 
to  make  Italian  sonnets  which  proved  acceptable  to 


MILTON  273 

the  Italian  taste  of  the  moment.  What  concerns  us 
more  deeply  is  the  state  in  which  English  literature 
found  itself  during  his  youthful  years. 

He  was  born,  we  have  seen,  in  1608.  That 
was  the  year  when  Shakspere  probably  came  to  the 
end  of  his  tragic  period,  and,  with  the  imi- 
tativeness  which  never  forsook  him,  was  about 
to  follow  the  newly  popular  manner  of  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  Spenser  had  been  dead  nine 
years;  Ben  Jonson  was  at  the  height  of  his  influence; 
and  Donne  had  turned  from  verse-making  to  the 
pulpit.  Of  the  masterpieces  of  seventeenth-century 
prose  at  which  we  glanced,  none  was  yet  published; 
but  the  Authorized  Version  of  the  Bible,  and  Bacon's 
"Essays,"^  and  Ralegh's  ''History"  were  approach- 
ing completion.  In  brief,  when  Milton  was  born  the 
true  Elizabethan  literature  was  complete,  and  the 
tendencies  which  marked  the  later  course  of  litera- 
ture in  England  were  beginning  to  declare  them- 
selves; but  not  even  the  drama  had  reached  a  stage 
of  disintegration  which  should  naturally  impress  a 
contemporary  as  a  certain  decline. 

The  world  was  moving  fast,  though.  In  1625, 
the  year  when  Milton  went  to  Cambridge,  Bacon 
published  his  essays  in  their  final  form;  and 
during  the  seven  years  of  Milton's  university 
life,   every  tendency  which  we  have  hitherto  traced 

'  In  the  second  edition,  of  course ;  the  first  is  so  slight  as  to  be  virtu- 
ally an  experimental  overture  to  the  final  work. 


274   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

in  English  literature  was  fully  developed.  In  those 
years  the  principal  dramatists  were  Massinger, 
Ford,  and  Shirley ;  the  chief  Spenserian  poets  at 
whom  we  glanced  had  done  most  of  their  work ; 
the  Sons  of  Ben  were  at  the  height  of  their  gay 
obedience;  the  conceits  of  Donne  were  penetrating 
everywhere;  and  probably  the  most  popular  work  of 
contemporary  literature  was  Burton's  "Anatomy  of 
Melancholy."  We  need  trouble  ourselves  for  the 
moment  with  no  more  retrospect.  We  must  turn  our 
attention  now  to  the  manner  in  which  Milton,  whose 
learning  had  shown  itself  so  willing  to  obey  the  forms 
of  conventional  culture,  seems  to  have  been  affected 
by  the  conventions  of  English  literature  during  his 
earlier  years. 

It  is  evidence  of  Milton's  precocity  that  one  of  his 
works,  which  is  widely  familiar  among  people  who 
never  suspect  that  he  wrote  it,  was  produced  when 
he  was  no  more  than  fifteen  years  old.  This  is  the 
metrical  version  of  the  One  Hundred  and  Thirty-Sixth 
Psalm,  beginning: 

Let  us,  with  a  gladsome  mind, 
Praise  the  Lord,  for  he  is  kind: 

For  his  mercies  aye  endure. 

Ever  faithful,  ever  sure. 

The  lines  have  lingered  in  hymn-books  to  this  day. 
Whoever  has  been  brought  up  in  regions  of  psalm- 
singing  knows  them  by  heart,  and  thinks  of  them. 


MILTON  275 

with  what  edification  or  rebellion  may  accompany 
such  association,  as  one  of  the  chants  in  which  con- 
gregations are  invited  to  join.  Students  of  Milton, 
on  the  other  hand,  who  have  critically  studied  the 
lines,  find  in  them  "rhymes,  images,  and  turns  of  ex- 
pression" which  demonstrate  some  knowledge  on  his 
part  of  a  number  of  English  poets — among  them 
Chaucer,  Spenser,  Drayton,  Drummond,  and  above 
all  Sylvester,  whose  ponderous  translation  of  Du 
Bartas,  a  French  Calvinistic  poet,  w^as  among  the 
favorite  books  of  English  Puritans  throughout  Mil- 
ton's youth.  What,  on  the  whole,  seems  more 
remarkable  than  these  traces  of  its  origin  are  that  the 
version,  though  the  work  of  a  mere  boy,  has  such 
simplicity  and  such  certainty  of  touch  as  to  make  it, 
on  the  whole,  rather  more  lastingly  effective  than  the 
various  passages  to  which  this  or  that  phrase  of  it 
has  been  traced.  In  the  fact  that,  so  early  in  life, 
Milton  could  absorb  the  influences  which  affected 
him,  making  them  his  own,  there  is  something  char- 
acteristic. On  the  other  hand,  as  anyone  may  see, 
this  psalm  is  by  no  means  Miltonic  in  effect. 

Not  particularly  Miltonic,  either,  is  the  first  of  the 
surviving  English  poems  which  he  wrote  at  Cam- 
bridge— the  lines  "On  the  Death  of  a  Fair  Infant 
Dying  of  A  Cough."  They  have  Miltonic  qualities, 
no  doubt — completeness  of  conception,  deliberation, 
seriousness,  elaborate  classical  allusions ;  but,  as  was 
the  case  with  the  familiar  psalm  of  a  year  or  two 


276   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

before,  these  qualities  are  not  instantly  salient.  You 
feel  in  the  lines  rather,  on  the  one  hand,  the  met- 
rical and  formal  influence  of  Spenser,  and  on  the 
other  hand  an  elaboration  of  overstrained  metaphor 
wherein  Donne,  though  not  exactly  imitated,  is  clean 
outdone.  The  nature  of  the  astonishing  conceit  by 
which  the  pulmonary  attack  of  the  deceased  baby  is 
figured,  as  well  as  the  Spenserian  tone  of  the  whole 
thing,  appears  in  the  first  stanza: 

O  fairest  flower,  no  sooner  blown  but  blasted, 

Soft  silken  Primrose  fading  timelessly, 
Summer's  chief  honour,  if  thou  hadst  outlasted 

Bleak  Winter's  force  that  made  thy  blossom  dry; 

For  he,  being  amorous  on  that  lovely  dye 
That  did  thy  cheek  envermeil,  thought  to  kiss, 
But  killed,  alas!  and  then  bewailed  his  fatal  bliss. 

Far  more  Milton's  own  is  the  first  of  the  poems  which 
have  won  him  his  true  place  in  literature.  This  is  the 
ode  "On  the  Morning  of  Christ's  Nativity,"  made 
when  he  was  only  twenty-one  years  old.  In  the  same 
Latin  epistle  to  his  half-Italian  friend  in  which  he 
sets  forth  his  conception  of  how  a  poet  should  govern 
every  vagary  of  youth,  he  tells  how  this  impulse  came 
to  him  on  Christmas  morning,  1629;^  and  of  all  the 
poems  he  has  left  us  this  seems,  on  the  whole,  the 
most  spontaneous.  There  is  plenty  of  Spenserian 
rhythm,  and  allegory,  of  course:  the  poem  might  be 

'  Dona  quidem  dedimus  Christi  natalibus  ilia; 
Ilia  sub  auroram  lux  mihi  prima  tulit. 


MILTON  277 

called  the  masterpiece  of  seventeenth  century  Spen- 
serianism.  There  are  elaborate  "metaphysical"  con- 
ceits, too,  such  as  that  of  the  second  stanza  in  the 
hymn,  where  Nature,  who  has  been  wantonly  mis- 
behaving in  the  first,  is  sobered  by  the  approaching 
birth  of  our  Lord,  wherefore — 

With  speeches  fair 

She  woos  the  gentle  air, 
To  hide  her  guilty  front  with  innocent  snow, 

And  on  her  naked  shame, 

Pollute  with  sinful  blame, 
The  saintly  veil  of  maiden  white  to  throw. 

No  imagery  could  be  much  more  decadent.  Such 
lines  as  these,  like  the  lines  in  which  elderly  and  amor- 
ous Winter,  two  or  three  years  before,  proceeded  to 
ravish  a  pretty  baby  girl,  belong,  in  spirit,  to  the 
days  when  the  drama  was  rotting  to  death.  And  yet, 
taken  as  a  whole,  this  great  ode  does  not  seem  deca- 
dent, nor  yet  imitative.  You  can  feel  it,  when  you 
stop  to  study  and  to  analyze,  a  work  of  its  own  later 
time,  when  Davenant  was  publishing,  and  Massinger, 
and  Francis  Quarles;  but  if  you  will  surrender  your- 
self to  the  mere  delight  of  reading,  you  will  be  swept 
along  with  such  surge  as  Milton's  final  achievement 
proved  peculiarly  his  ow-n.  Yet  here  this  surge  has  a 
spontaneity,  a  freshness  which  still  reminds  you  that  he 
was  almost  Elizabethan. 

Take  the  stanza  where  he  tells  how  the  pagan  gods 


278   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

were  smitten  with  fright  when  the  incarnation  of  the 
true  God  irradiated  earth  : 

Peor  and  Baalim 
Forsake  their  temples  dim, 
With  that  twice-battered  god  of  Palestine; 
And  mooned  Ashtaroth, 
Heaven's  Queen  and  Mother  both, 
Now  sits  not  girt  with  tapers'  holy  shrine: 
The  Libyc  Hammort  shrinks  his  horn; 
In  vain  the  Tyrian  maids  their  wounded  Thammuz  mourn. 

Spenserian,  if  you  choose  to  look  backward,  these 
lines,  more  certainly  still,  are  fully  Miltonic  in  their 
promise.  It  has  been  said  that  a  poet  is  never  so 
surely  himself  as  when,  apart  from  all  allusion,  from 
all  positive  meaning,  he  abandons  himself  to  delight 
in  the  lyric  use  of  proper  names.  And  here  you  can 
feel,  if  you  will,  that  same  magic  use  of  proper  names 
which  grandly  pervades  so  many  passages  of  "Para- 
dise Lost."  One  might  linger  long  over  this  great 
ode.  It  is  noteworthy  for  us  as  showing  how,  even 
in  youth,  Milton,  who  could  not  help  being  a  man 
of  his  time,  could  suffuse  the  conventions  from  which 
he  was  to  break  with  his  own  assertive  and  titanic 
individuality. 

And  yet  he  could  not  do  so  at  will.  This  Christmas 
Ode  seems  more  than  usually  spontaneous.  With  a 
deliberation  more  characteristic  than  spontaneity  ever 
was,  he  tried,  toward  Easter,  to  make  a  companion 
poem  concerning  the  Passion.    He  gave  it  up,  as  his 


MILTON  279 

note  at  the  close  of  the  fragment  says,  because  he 
found  the  subject  "above  the  years  he  had  when  he 
wrote  it."  But  though  we  may  share  his  dissatisfac- 
tion, and  be  glad  that  his  eighth  stanza  proved  his 
last,  we  need  not  accept  his  reason.  The  real  trouble 
was  that,  writing  laboriously,  he  wrote  in  the  full 
conceit  of  his  decadent  time;  and  so  wrote,  as  a  matter 
of  taste,  abominably:  for  example. 

Or,  should  I  thence,  hurried  on  viewless  wing, 
Take  up  a  weeping  on  the  mountains  wild. 

The  gentle  neighbourhood  of  grove  and  spring 
Would  soon  unbosom  all  their  Echoes  mild; 
And  I  (for  grief  is  easily  beguiled) 

Might  think  the  infection  of  my  sorrows  loud 

Had  got  a  race  of  mourners  on  some  pregnant  cloud. 

No  wonder,  a  year  or  so  later,  on  his  twenty-third 
birthday,  he  could  honestly  write,  in  lines  as  simple 
as  they  are  grave,  and  consequently  individual: 

How  soon  hath  Time,  the  subtle  thief  of  youth. 
Stolen  on  his  wing  my  three  and  twentieth  year ; 
My  hasting  days  fly  on  with  full  career, 

But  my  late  spring  no  bud  or  blossom  shew'th. 

It  was  about  two  years  later,  when  he  was  living 
quietly  at  Horton,  that  he  produced  his  first  thorough 
masterpieces,  "L'Allegro"  and  "11  Penseroso."  In 
these,  as  much  as  in  anything  he  ever  wrote,  one 
feels  him  absolutely  himself.  His  gravity  of  purpose 
pervades  them,  with  all  its  underlying  Puritan  earnest- 


28o   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

ness;  his  culture  pervades  them  too,  with  less  ped- 
antry than  usual;  and  his  delight  in  pure  beauty 
— in  those  aspects  of  this  world  which  are  at 
once  innocent  and  pregnant  with  joy — is  at  its 
height.  So  is  the  deliberation  which  blends  these 
qualities  in  lines  we  may  fairly  call  faultless.  There 
is  much  less  trace  of  Spenser  than  in  the  poems 
he  made  at  Cambridge;  there  is  very  little  trace  of 
such  over-ingenious  conceit  as  sprung  from  the  influ- 
ence of  Donne.  Though,  like  all  his  work,  these 
poems  are  far  from  what  we  now  call  humor,  there 
is  beneath  them  a  dominant  sense  of  humor,  which 
saves  them  from  absurdity  and  from  faults  of  taste. 
The  students  tell  us  that  he  was  probably  stirred  to 
choice  of  his  subjects  by  some  lines  in  Burton's 
"Anatomy  of  Melancholy" — a  book  which  he  is  known 
to  have  read  by  this  time.  They  tell  us,  too,  that 
there  are  songs  in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  probably 
earlier  than  these  lines  of  Milton,  and  yet  so  like  them 
that  we  can  hardly  hold  the  likeness  accidental.  They 
point  out,  as  well,  that  the  final  couplet  of  both 
"L' Allegro"  and  "11  Penseroso"  is  clearly  reminis- 
cent of  Marlowe's  "Come  live  with  me  and  be  my 
love."  Yet  there  might  be  room,  all  the  while,  for  an 
opinion  which  should  maintain  that  just  as  the  "Ode 
on  Christ's  Nativity"  shows  the  individuality  of  Mil- 
ton breaking  through  the  contemporary  conventions 
which  were  stiffening  into  rigidity  the  manners  of 
Spenser  and  of  Donne,  so — more  remotely — "L'Alle- 


MILTON  281 

gro"  and  "II  Penseroso"  show  how  this  same  indi- 
viduaHty  of  Milton's  could  pervade,  and  alter,  and 
absorb  into  a  form  which  finally  seems  almost  inde- 
pendent the  contemporary  conventions  which,  at  the 
same  time,  were  imposing  on  so  wide  a  range  of  Eng- 
lish poetry  the  principles  asserted  and  practised  by 
Jonson. 

It  is  not  that  these  poems  imitate  Jonson,  nor 
yet  that  anyone  could  quite  mistake  them  for  con- 
ventional utterances  from  the  tribe  of  Ben.  It  is 
rather  that  the  chaste  precision  of  their  form  has  an 
underlying,  as  distinguished  from  a  superficial  or  ob- 
trusive, classical  spirit  such  as  makes  excellent  the 
assimilated  classicism  of  Jonson  himself.  At  least,  it 
is  hardly  fantastic  to  suggest  that  by  this  time  Mil- 
ton, the  great  poet  of  the  mid-century,  had  shown 
himself  accessible  to  all  the  influences  in  contemporary 
English  poetry;  and  had  proved  himself  able  to  mas- 
ter those  influences,  instead  of  being  mastered  by 
them. 

In  the  next  works  which  proceeded  from  him  at 
Horton,  he  appears  in  a  totally  different  character. 
So  far,  except  for  the  pleasant  allusions  to  the  stage 
in  its  nobler  aspect  which  occur  in  "L'Allegro"  and 
"II  Penseroso,"  and  for  some  conventional  lines  among 
others  prefixed  to  the  second  folio  of  Shakspere, 
Milton  had  shown  little  interest  in  dramatic  poetry. 
Nothing,  indeed,  could  have  been  more  remote  from 
the  license  and  disrepute  of  the  theatre  than  his  Puri- 


282   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

tan  and  scholarly  life.  He  came  of  precisely  that 
social  class — neither  high  enough  to  patronize  the 
stage  nor  low  enough  to  be  indifferent  to  conven- 
tional respectability — which  can  concern  itself  with 
theatrical  affairs  only  at  the  expense  of  its  self- 
respect.  But  there  had  arisen,  by  this  time,  a  spe- 
cific kind  of  dramatic  writing  which  was  at  once 
practicable,  in  the  sense  that  it  was  made  to  be  acted, 
and  as  impeccably  respectable  as  any  closet-drama  fash- 
ioned on  Seneca  or  on  the  Greeks.  This  was  the 
masque — a  kind  of  thing  now  virtually  extinct,  or 
rather,  perhaps,  now  developed  into  the  full  profes- 
sional conventions  of  opera  and  ballet. 

Italian  in  origin,  the  masques  were  essentially 
elaborate  spectacles,  with  every  device  of  decoration, 
of  costume,  of  music,  of  dancing  and  the  like,  which 
the  resources  of  the  time  would  allow.  They  were 
apt  to  be  performed  not  by  professional  actors, 
but  by  courtiers  or  by  other  persons  of  condition 
who  amused  themselves  in  this  elaborate  and,  in  every 
sense,  extravagant  fashion.  From  time  to  time,  pro- 
fessional dramatists  were  called  on  to  produce  the 
words  and  the  plots  for  masques,  generally  alle- 
gorical in  substance,  which  were  to  be  performed 
at  court  or  elsewhere.  The  dramatic  literature  of 
the  early  seventeenth  century  is  full  of  them.  They 
are  generally  as  dull  to  read  as  the  texts  of  old- 
fashioned  Italian  operas;  but  they  are  dull  reading 
of  a  period  when  lyric  poetry  was  still  alive;  and  from 


MILTON  283 

amid  their  tedious  and  trivial  conventions,  which 
needed,  for  enlivenment,  all  the  accessories  of  their 
elaborate  presentation,  you  can  cull  songs  enough 
to  make  the  search  for  them  pleasant.  And  now  and 
then  this  kind  of  writing  emerged  into  a  pretty,  arti- 
ficial excellence. 

Some  critics  are  inclined  to  class  with  masques, 
or  at  least  to  describe  as  hybrids  between  masques 
and  regular  plays,  the  exquisitely  fantastic  beauties  of 
Shakspere's  "Midsummer  Night's  Dream"  and  of  his 
"Tempest."  It  were  better  to  point  to  the  interlude 
of  Pyramus  and  Thisbe,  in  the  former,  as  an  example 
of  the  native  convention  which  allied  itself  with  the 
Italian  to  produce  the  full  English  masque  of  Stuart 
times;  and  to  indicate  the  formal  little  masque  with 
which  Prospero  entertains  his  friends  in  the  "Tem- 
pest" as  an  example  of  what  this  kind  of  thing  was 
like  about  161 2.  Of  the  masques  by  the  regular  play- 
wrights which  have  survived  those  which  retain  most 
vitality  and  beauty  are  perhaps  the  "Sun's  Darling," 
attributed  to  Dekker  and  Ford;  Ben  Jonson's  "Sad 
Shepherd" ;  and  the  "Faithful  Shepherdess,"  of  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher.  If  you  will  surrender  yourself 
to  the  spirit  of  these,  you  may  find  in  them  still 
not  only  lyric  delight,  but  the  kind  of  pleasure  said 
to  be  attainable  even  to-day  by  people  who  can  make 
themselves  accept  the  allegories  of  a  ballet  or  a  panto- 
mime. 

In  the  days  when  Ben  Jonson  was  laureate,  he 


284   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

made  masque  after  masque  for  performance  at  court; 
and  the  scenic  effects  were  contrived  by  Inigo  Jones; 
and  the  greatest  personages  did  not  disdain  to  take 
parts  in  the  pageant ;  and  what  it  all  cost,  heaven 
knows.  At  all  events,  this  kind  of  frivolity  was  pecul- 
iarly repugnant  to  the  less  cultivated  Puritans,  who 
found  in  it  special  evidence  that  depravity  was  actually 
saturating  the  great  w^orld  from  which  they  were  com- 
pletely shut  out. 

When  Prynne's  "Histriomastix"  appeared,  in  1633, 
a  passage  which,  with  a  virulence  excessive  even 
for  him,  denounced  female  actors  was  taken  as  an 
allusion  to  the  recent  appearance  of  the  Queen,  Henri- 
etta Maria,  in  some  court  masque.  It  was  this 
passage  in  particular  which  brought  Prynne  accord- 
ingly to  the  pillory;  and  the  publicity  of  Prynne's 
crime  and  punishment  was  what  stirred  the  Inns  of 
Court  to  entertain  royalty  with  the  most  elaborate 
and  costly  masque  as  yet  seen  in  England.  The 
same  impulse  seems  to  have  stimulated  a  general 
demand  for  this  kind  of  writing.  To  the  fact 
that  Lawes,  a  musician  known  to  be  among 
Milton's  friends,  desired  words  for  some  masque- 
music  we  probably  owe  the  fragments  of  a  masque 
by  Milton  which  are  called  "Arcades" — elaborate 
little  songs  and  a  long  rhymed  speech  in  honor  of  the 
old  Countess  of  Derby.  To  the  same  cause  which 
produced  these  we  certainly  owe  the  elaborate  masque 
"Comus,"    made   immediately   afterwards;   the  three 


MILTON  285 

principal  parts  in  it  were  written  for  performance  by 
three  of  this  venerable  lady's  young  grandchildren. 

The  first  fact  which  "Comus"  demonstrates  con- 
cerning Milton  is  that,  whatever  he  was,  he  was  no 
dramatist.  "Samson  Agonistes,"  his  only  other  work 
in  dramatic  form,  was  never  intended  for  performance, 
and  may  fairly  be  judged  on  its  noble  merits  as  a 
poem.  But  "Comus"  was  made  for  acting.  And  if 
by  chance  you  are  ever  exposed  to  the  opportunity 
of  witnessing  an  academic  revival  of  it — we  have  had 
an  admirable  one,  within  a  few  years,  in  America — 
you  should  shun  the  temptation,  unless  you  chance 
to  be  curious  as  to  the  depths  of  tediousness  which 
can  be  compressed  into  an  hour.  An  old-fashioned 
Calvinistic  sermon  is  gay  in  comparison;  and  the 
motive  of  "Comus"  is  one  which  might  most  fitly 
assume  the  form  of  homiletic  eloquence.  Plays,  doubt- 
less, can  teach  and  preach,  and  stir  you  still.  The 
trouble  with  "Comus"  is  that  from  beginning  to  end 
its  only  dramatic  phase  is  that  its  lines  are  placed  in 
the  mouth  now  of  one  lifeless  personage  and  again  of 
another.  Nothing  happens — as  was  apt,  indeed,  to  be 
the  case  with  masques,  anyway ;  there  is  hardly  a  sug- 
gestion of  individual  character ;  and  the  speeches  drag 
on  their  sonorous  length  until  each  in  turn  suggests 
some  drearily  fresh  conception  of  unblest  eternity. 

And  yet,  for  all  this,  "Comus"  is  a  noble  poem. 
The  conventional  masques,  after  the  corrupt  fashion 
of  the  time,  were  apt,  like  the  sentimental  plays  of 


286   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

the  decadent  dramatists,  to  celebrate  the  virtue  of 
a  merely  physical  chastity.  Frankly  accepting  this 
conventional  motive,  and  unwittingly  admitting  him- 
self by  the  acceptance  a  poet  of  the  dramatic  deca- 
dence, Milton,  with  all  his  Puritan  solemnity  of 
temper,  turned  the  mummeries  of  conventional  alle- 
gory into  an  assertion  that  chastity,  to  be  potent, 
must  be  a  purity  not  of  the  flesh,  but  of  the  spirit.  And 
bringing  to  his  labors  the  elevated  conscientiousness 
of  his  cultured  cult  of  noble  poetry,  he  made  his 
appallingly  dull  play  a  nobly  sustained  and  complete 
poem.  If  we  cannot  listen  to  its  performance  without 
despair,  we  cannot  read  the  lines  of  it  without  that 
sense  of  deep  and  wondering  admiration  which  Mil- 
ton alone  of  deliberate  English  poets  can  kindle  into 
some  semblance  of  enthusiasm. 

This  "Comus"  is  not  only,  what  the  conventional 
masques  hardly  ever  were,  an  almost  classically  com- 
plete composition  in  form.  It  is  sustained  through- 
out by  classical  unity  of  serious  spirit,  transmuting 
the  frank  paganism  of  Renaissance  tradition  into  a 
depth  of  moral  meaning  wherein  no  trace  of  paganism 
lingers  save  in  abundance  of  classical  allusion. 
Throughout  its  lyric  passages,  the  kind  of  solemn 
music  which  animates  every  line  of  "L' Allegro"  and 
'Tl  Penseroso"  vibrates  with  all  its  stately  power. 
And  in  the  blank  verse  which  the  nominal  personages 
so  volubly  roll  forth,  we  hear  at  last  the  deep  notes 
of  that  Miltonic  grandeur  which  was  to  make  the 


MILTON  287 

diction  of  "Paradise  Lost"  a  new  revelation  of  what 
English  verse  could  be. 

These  noble  merits,  all  Milton's  own,  have  brought 
their  reward.  Turning  himself  deliberately  to  dra- 
matic poetry, — the  species  w^iich,  at  a  time  just  before 
his,  had  normally  grown  to  highest  excellence, — he  im- 
pregnated it,  just  as  he  had  impregnated  the  lyric  tra- 
ditions of  Spenser,  of  Jonson  and  of  Donne,  with  a  seri- 
ous grandeur  of  spirit  all  his  own.  He  proved  himself 
masterly,  as  Shakspere  had  proved  himself  masterly 
a  generation  before.  Here  was  a  poet  who  could  not 
touch  the  work  of  others  without  leaving  on  it  his 
own  noble  impress.  More  limited  in  sympathetic 
insight  than  Shakspere,  or  than  the  least  of  the  drama- 
tists, he  could  not  make  this  impress  other  than  that 
of  his  own  obvious  individuality;  but,  as  we  have 
seen,  solitary  individuality  was  growing  to  be  typical, 
throughout  literature,  of  the  days  through  which  he 
was  living.  So  he  made,  in  "Comus,"  the  least  divert- 
ing masque  in  English  literature ;  and  made,  the  while, 
the  one  English  poem,  in  masque  form,  which  took  at 
once  and  forever  a  permanent  place  in  the  great 
poetry  of  the  modern  world. 

Something  similar  is  true  of  the  other  and  the  last 
poem  which  has  surely  survived  from  these  earlier 
days.  His  masterpiece  some  are  disposed  to  call 
"Lycidas";  and  no  comment  on  it  would  be  tolerable 
which  should  distract  us  from  its  consummate  dig- 
nity   and    beauty.     Yet    in    its    historical     relation 


288   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

to  Milton's  former  poems,  and  to  the  literature 
which  had  affected  these,  it  may  prove,  apart 
from  its  own  lyric  perfection,  a  matter  of  fresh 
interest  and  of  suggestion.  The  occasion  of  it  is 
familiar.  A  young  man  whom  Milton  had  known  at 
Cambridge,  and  who  was  destined  for  the  Church, — 
a  man  who,  in  some  intangible  but  unmistakable  way, 
seems  to  have  impressed  whoever  knew  him  as  prom- 
ising,— was  accidentally  drowned  on  his  way  home 
from  Ireland.  A  volume  of  memorial  verse,  mostly 
in  conventional  Latin,  was  presently  collected  in  his 
honor.  To  this  collection  Milton,  who  had  apparently 
written  no  extant  poetry  since  "Comus,"  contributed 
the  pastoral  elegy  which  alone  makes  the  volume,  or 
the  youth  it  celebrated,  lastingly  memorable. 

It  has  been  urged  by  sympathetic  critics  that  the 
pastoral  conventions  here  so  frankly  accepted  were 
welcome  to  Milton — just  as  they  had  been  welcome 
to  Spenser  before  him,  and  were  welcome  to  Shelley 
in  later  days — because  they  permit  a  poet  to  wander 
in  a  region  of  pure,  unmixed  ideals,  where  the  flights 
and  the  impulses  of  his  imagination  need  never  be 
checked  by  any  such  benumbing  and  controlling 
sense  of  fact  as  must  perforce  affect  all  literal  state- 
ments, or  indeed  all  dramatic  or  epic  poetry  which 
deals  with  actual  human  beings.  And  inasmuch  as 
those  who,  recognizing  the  artificiality  of  pastoral 
poetry,  thus  assert  its  virtue,  are  apt  to  be  themselves 
of  poetic  temper,  it  is  perhaps  rash  to  suppose  thern 


MILTON  289 

in  any  wise  mistaken.  Very  surely,  too,  the  fact  that 
pastoral  conventions,  in  varying  forms,  have  so  long 
and  so  widely  persisted  means  that,  despite  their  arti- 
ficiality, they  must  at  once  express  and  appeal  to 
emotions  widely  diffused  among  human  beings. 
Admitting  all  this,  it  is  equally  true  that  even  the 
pastoral  poetry  of  the  Greeks  seems  an  intentional, 
conscious  conventionalizing  of  nature  into  dainty 
prettiness;  that  the  Latin  pastorals  seem  deliberately 
conventional  imitations  of  Greek  prettiness,  admired 
because  it  proceeded  from  the  source  of  civiHzation; 
and  that  the  Renaissance  pastorals  of  Continental 
Europe  bear  to  the  Latin  much  such  relation  as  the 
Latin  bear  to  the  Greek.  By  Milton's  time,  it  has 
been  remarked,  the  English  imitators  of  Continental 
pastorals — particularly  Spenser  and  Browne — had 
introduced  into  this  extremely  artificial  kind  of  writ- 
ing pretty  touches  from  actual  nature,  which  brought 
the  English  pastoral  somewhat  nearer  to  life  than  any 
other  since  the  original  Greek.  And  there  are  sun- 
dry sympathetic  discussions  of  what  "must  have  been" 
the  conscious  motive  of  Spenser  in  choosing  to  cele- 
brate Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  Sir  Walter  Ralegh  in  the 
guise  of  Dresden  china  shepherds. 

What  "must  have  been"  the  case  with  any  man 
whose  motives  are  unrecorded  is  a  convincing  state- 
ment only  when  you  are  disposed  to  agree.  All 
we  can  surely  assert  concerning  Spenser  is  that  he 
was  a  conscientious  experimenter,  who  found  our  Eng- 


290   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

lish  still  untamed  to  such  service  as  the  conditions  of 
civilized  literature  demand,  and  who  strove  deliberately 
to  discover  the  civilized  forms  to  which  he  could  per- 
manently tame  it.  His  formal  success  was  amazing. 
Beginning  with  almost  blind  experiments  in  classical 
metres  and  the  like,  he  ended  by  adapting  from  the 
Italian  that  wonderful  stanza  which  is  so  surely  his 
own  that  one  thinks  of  it  rather  as  a  creation  than 
as  an  adaptation.  So,  long  before  the  end, — even  in 
many  passages  from  the  "Shepherd's  Calendar," — 
Spenser's  style,  the  detail  of  his  poetry,  rose  to  such 
positive  beauty  that  one  is  constantly  tempted  to  for- 
get the  old-world  archaism  of  the  thoughts  it  sets 
forth.  Yet,  as  one  grows  familiar  with  Spenser,  none 
of  his  traits  grows  more  certain  than  what  has  been 
called  the  pre-Quixotic  vagary  of  his  romantic  inven- 
tion and  fantasy.  He  wrote  the  language  of  the 
immortals;  but  he  clothed  in  it  not  so  much  immortal 
creations  of  imagination  as  ingeniously  fantastic  vari- 
ations of  conventions  which  appealed  to  his  time — 
and  so  far  as  one  can  tell  to  him  among  the  men 
of  his  time — chiefly  because  they  came  from  regions 
more  civilized  than  Elizabethan  poets  found  their 
native  ones.  In  other  words,  the  pastoral  conventions 
seem  to  have  been  welcome  to  Spenser  for  the  same 
reason  which  made  Greek  pastorals  admirable  to  the 
Romans  of  the  Empire — because  they  were  the  fash- 
ion among  people  whom  he  wished  to  imitate  and  to 
emulate. 


MILTON  291 

Milton's  frank  acceptance  of  pastoral  convention 
in  "Lycidas"  indicates  something  similar.  In  the 
Latin  letters  of  his  youthful  days,  in  the  Latin  elegies 
which  he  made  at  Cambridge  and  later  printed,  in 
almost  every  record  of  his  early  studies  and  expres- 
sions, there  is  trace  of  his  personality;  and  those  who 
seek  in  them  chiefly  the  Milton  who  was  to  be  will 
doubtless  find  him.  But  those  who  should  approach 
the  same  records  unprejudiced  would  be  apt  to  find 
in  them  little  more  than  astonishingly  thorough  ex- 
amples of  how  a  studious  youth,  saturated  with  the 
scholarship  which  in  Milton's  day  was  orthodox,  could, 
with  all  the  ardor  of  what  he  deemed  sincerity,  expend 
endless  energy  in  assimilating  himself  to  utterly  unreal 
conventions.  An  English  youth  expressing  himself  in 
the  terms,  and  striving  to  express  himself  in  the  mood, 
not  of  England  but  of  civilized  antiquity,  is  after  all 
a  masquer.  That  he  does  not  know  himself  for  one 
does  not  change  the  fact.  It  only  marks  him  either 
as  lacking  humor — as  Milton  lacked  it,  and  Shelley, 
too ;  or  else  as  of  a  period,  like  that  of  Spenser,  when 
the  art  he  practised  is  not  yet  so  fully  developed  that 
the  saving  grace  of  humor  can  sweeten  and  human- 
ize it. 

Now  the  pastoral  conventions  of  "Lycidas"  may 
surely  be  held  dear  to  Milton  because  of  the  freedom 
they  gave  him  to  muster  in  a  single  poem  images  and 
fancies  from  the  whole  range  of  his  learning,  his  specu- 
lation, and  his  culture.     But  it  may  equally  be  main- 


292   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

tained  that  there  is  no  reason  for  so  abstruse  an 
explanation  of  them.  Milton,  we  have  seen,  was  a 
poet  in  whose  conscientious  and  deliberate  work  one 
can  find  trace  after  trace  of  the  poets  who  preceded 
him — of  the  old  Puritan  Sylvester,  of  Spenser,  of 
Jonson,  of  Donne,  and  even  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  and  of  Marlowe — of  the  makers  not  only 
of  lyrics  and  epics,  but  of  court  masques.  When  he 
had  written  before,  he  had  seemingly  chosen  his  form, 
as  anyone  else  would  choose  it,  because  the  form  was 
recognized.  And  thus,  at  least  we  may  suppose,  he 
chose  a  pastoral  form  for  his  elegy  because  in  his  time 
that  form  was  regular. 

This  does  not  mean  that  he  left  the  form  where  he 
found  it.  We  have  seen  enough  of  him  already  to 
understand  how  from  the  beginning  he  was  of  those 
poets  who,  in  adopting  the  conventions  of  other  men, 
impress  on  them  their  own  individuality.  And  by  the 
time  of  "Lycidas,"  the  individuality  of  Milton  had 
grown  more  austere.  The  mood  even  of  "Comus"  is 
more  severe  than  that  of  "L'Allegro"  and  "11  Penser- 
oso."  In  "Lycidas"  his  Puritan  severity  has  deepened 
until  his  final  utterance  of  it  rises  to  the  height  of 
deliberate  prophecy : 

How  well  could  I  have  spared  for  thee,  young  swain, 

Enow  of  such  as  for  their  belHes'  sake 

Creep,  and  intrude,  and  climb  into  the  fold! 

Of  other  care  they  little  reckoning  make 

Than  how  to  scramble  at  the  shearers'  feast, 

And  shove  away  the  worthy  bidden  guest! 


MILTON  293 

Blind  mouths!  that  scarce  themselves  know  how  to  hold 

A  sheephook,  or  have  leam'd  aught  else  the  least 

That  to  the  faithful  herdsman's  art  belongs! 

What  recks  it  then?    What  need  they?    They  are  sped 

And,  when  they  list,  their  lean  and  flashy  songs 

Grate  on  their  scrannel  pipes  of  wretched  straw; 

The  hungry  sheep  look  up,  and  are  not  fed; 

But  swoln  with  wind,  and  the  rank  mist  they  draw, 

Rot  inwardly,  and  foul  contagion  spread; 

Besides  what  the  grim  wolf  with  privy  paw 

Daily  devours  apace,  and  nothing  sed; 

But  that  two-handed  engine  at  the  door 

Stands  ready  to  smite  once,  and  smite  no  more. 

History  was  moving  fast  in  those  days;  and  Laud's 
efforts  to  enforce  conformity  were  concentrating  the 
Puritan  spirit  in  a  conscious  antagonism  more  and 
more  burning.  These  were  just  the  years,  too,  when 
New  England  was  founding.  When  Milton  went  to 
Cambridge,  the  only  settlement  in  New  England  was 
that  at  Plymouth;  when  "Lycidas"  was  pubHshed, 
there  were  already  undergraduates  at  Harvard  Col- 
lege. The  period  during  which  we  have  been  follow- 
ing his  development  was  precisely  that  when  the  tra- 
ditions of  New  England  parted  from  those  of  the 
mother  country.  And  Milton  does  not  burst  forth 
into  the  full  austerity  of  his  Puritanic  denunciation 
till  this  "Lycidas"  of  1638.  Here  he  shows  himself 
no  longer  Elizabethan,  but  stirred  by  the  Puritanism 
of  the  years  to  come — the  militant  Puritanism  of  the 
seventeenth  century.      And  thus,  by  the  individuality 


294   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

which  broke  through  the  confines  of  accepted  pastoral 
convention,  he  made  of  "Lycidas"  what  he  had  made 
of  "Comus,"  three  or  four  years  before.  It  is  at  once 
an  example  of  a  literary  type  accidentally  popular  in 
his  time,  always  artificial,  now  outworn;  and  the  ex- 
pression of  a  poetic  individuality  so  dominant  and 
so  assertive,  in  its  strange  combination  of  Renaissance 
culture  with  Puritan  austerity,  that  even  the  substance 
of  this  poem  would  give  it  lasting  place  in  literature. 
When  we  add  to  this  the  magical  beauties  of  its  verse, 
we  can  see  why,  again  and  again,  men  forget  its  archa- 
isms of  conception  and  fashion,  seeing  in  it  only — 
what  it  surely  is — an  immortal  masterpiece. 

At  the  same  time,  this  masterpiece, — like  "Comus," 
and  like  "L'Allegro"  and  "11  Penseroso,"— full  though 
it  be  of  Elizabethan  influence,  is  no  longer  a  poem 
which  anyone  could  guess  to  be  of  the  true  Elizabethan 
period.  The  note  of  that  elder  day,  as  we  have  so 
often  reminded  ourselves,  was  a  note  of  national 
integrity.  In  whatever  ways  Elizabethan  Englishmen 
expressed  themselves,  you  can  always  feel  that  they 
were  intelligible  to  another;  one  and  all  seem,  as 
we  regard  them  in  the  perspective  of  time,  contem- 
poraries and  fellow-countrymen.  As  we  followed 
the  course  of  seventeenth  century  literature  in  its 
various  streams  toward  and  beyond  the  time  to  which 
we  have  now  followed  the  career  of  Milton,  we 
remarked,  as  perhaps  its  most  characteristic  trait, 
that   the   men   who    expressed   themselves    in    lasting 


MILTON  295 

English  seemed  more  and  more  solitary.  Compare 
Shirley  with  Shakspere,  Herrick  with  Ben  Jonson, 
Sir  Thomas  Browne  with  Bacon,  and  you  will  feel 
the  fact  now  in  question.  Whatever  the  merits  or 
the  powers  of  the  later  generation,  it  had  distinct 
limits.  Each  man,  in  those  later  days,  seems  no 
longer  to  address  the  whole  body  of  his  countrymen; 
he  speaks  only  to  those  who  are  disposed  to  listen. 
Nor  does  he  always  seem  much  to  care  whether  many 
listen  or  not. 

In  the  case  of  Milton,  this  kind  of  personal  soli- 
tude, so  generally  characteristic  of  his  contemporaries, 
appears  with  extreme  distinctness.  It  is  not  quite 
the  result  either  of  his  origin  or  of  his  native 
temper.  A  generation  earlier,  and  a  generation  later, 
you  can  imagine, — in  times  when  English  litera- 
ture was  still  integral,  or  in  times  when  it  tended 
to  reintegration, — this  Milton,  with  his  purity  of 
purpose,  with  his  mingled  austerity  and  culture,  need 
not  have  sat  apart  or  stood  alone.  The  willing- 
ness with  which  he  adapted  himself,  in  his  Latin 
writings  and  his  English  alike,  to  forms  of  expression 
which  were  recognized  as  excellent  would  prove  him 
by  the  width  of  heaven  apart  from  those  eccentrics 
of  decadent  literature  and  art  who  can  be  what  they 
deem  their  true  selves  only  when  they  deliberately 
avoid  resembHng  anyone  else.  The  solitude  of  Milton 
is  rather  the  inevitable  solitude  of  his  disintegrating 
time.    He  was  too  masterful  and  too  masterly  not  to 


296   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

be  himself;  and  asserting  himself,  he  asserts  some- 
thing apart  from  others,  not  something  which  in- 
stantly appeals  to  common  humanity, 

A  subtle  fact,  this,  and  one  which  may  seem  doubtful. 
Yet,  there  can  be  little  question  that,  whether  or  no,  the 
great  surviving  figures  of  art  and  of  letters  are  bound 
to  have  a  double  aspect.  In  one  phase  they  are  ever- 
lasting— persisting  through  the  generations,  safe  above 
the  storms  of  time.  As  such,  perhaps,  we  are  wisest 
generally  to  recognize  and  to  consider  them.  But 
in  another  phase  they  prove,  even  despite  themselves, 
men  of  their  own  time,  too.  And  none  was  ever 
more  so  than  this  Milton — a  Spenserian,  touched 
by  the  traditions  of  Jonson,  too,  and  of  Donne;  a 
maker  of  masques,  like  the  playwrights;  a  maker,  as 
well,  of  pastoral  elegy,  like  Spenser  and  more;  assert- 
ive, like  any  great  poet,  of  his  own  individuality;  and 
thus  asserting  his  individuality  not  a  great  man  domi- 
nant— like  Shakspere  before  him  and  Dryden  after- 
wards— but  a  great  man  inevitably  apart. 

These  English  poems,  at  which  we  have  glanced 
as  closely  as  is  now  possible,  were  the  chief  utterances 
of  his  early  period.  Immediately  after  he  wrote 
"Lycidas"  came  his  journey  to  Italy.  In  the  course 
of  this,  he  seems  to  have  been  cordially  welcomed, 
wherever  he  travelled,  by  men  of  fastidious  culture, 
who  found  in  him  an  Englishman  of  such  academic 
accomplishment  as  could  maintain  itself  with  the  best 
of  Continental  Europe.     In  a  way,  as  one  glances  at 


MILTON  297 

what  records  remain  of  his  travels,  these  months  of 
pleasant  wandering  in  the  regions  which  have  ahvays 
proved  most  sympathetically  stimulating  to  English 
poets,  and  to  American  poets  as  well,  seem  the  least 
solitary  of  his  life.  At  any  time  there  is  scattered 
through  the  civilized  world  a  little  brotherhood  of 
culture  which  eagerly  recognizes  its  fellows,  stray 
from  whence  they  may.  And  often  men  of  this  type 
feel  most  themselves  while  they  are  wandering, — when, 
at  each  new  turn,  they  meet  congenial  spirits  with 
whom  they  do  not  linger  long  enough  to  differ.  Such 
journeyings  are  not  precisely  fruitful.  In  the  pleasant 
eagerness  with  which  travellers  suddenly  feel  the 
reality  of  regions  and  men  who  have  been  familiar 
to  them  only  in  the  half  light  of  reading  and 
learning,  there  is  little  time  left  for  such  depth  of 
experience  as  should  instantly  demand  or  find  ade- 
quate expression.  The  days  of  journeying  are  not 
generally  days  of  harvest;  but  the  seeds  which  fall  in 
those  pleasant  times  are  apt  to  sink  deep.  So  in 
memory,  as  in  anticipation,  such  days  are  apt  to  seem 
the  most  delightful  granted  on  earth  to  those  whom 
temperament,  or  the  state  of  their  times,  condemns  at 
home  to  solitude. 

The  chief  poetic  traces  of  this  period  in  Milton's  life 
are  the  few  Italian  sonnets,  in  which  he  proved  him- 
self so  accomplished  a  man  of  culture.  How  these 
may  seem  to  Italians,  one  can  only  guess.  To  Eng- 
lishmen, they  confuse  themselves  with  the  work  of  the 


298   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

long  forgotten  Italian  versifiers  who  in  Milton's  time 
prettily  maintained  the  graceful  fantasies  of  a  highly 
conventionalized  poetry.  Whether  their  sentiment  is 
genuine,  no  one  knows.  They  may  have  been  made  for 
some  living  lady,  who  chanced  to  touch  the  fancy  of 
the  accomplished  traveller  from  beyond  the  Alps  and 
the  Channel;  just  as  the  earlier  Latin  elegy  which 
celebrates  the  charms  of  English  girls  may  perhaps 
relate,  in  its  conventional  guise,  some  actual  and  inno- 
cent youthful  flirtation.  On  the  other  hand,  they 
may  be  merely  conventional  exercises,  made  during 
pleasant  moments  when  the  poet  whose  real  individu- 
ality was  so  crescently  austere  abandoned  himself 
freely  to  the  lighter  pleasures  of  confident  scholarly 
mastery  of  his  vehicle.  At  all  events,  the  records  of 
Milton's  months  abroad  are  records  only  of  happily  in- 
significant culture — of  such  temper  as  whiles  away 
hours  in  graceful  and  harmless  pleasure. 

With  Milton  this  interval  did  not  last  long.  Why 
he  returned  to  England  is  not  precisely  known.  It 
has  been  thought,  and  reasonably,  that  news  of  the 
rising  troubles  in  his  country  made  him  feel  that  his 
place  was  there,  where  before  long  he  had  another 
part  to  play  than  that  of  a  late  Elizabethan  poet, 
strengthened  and  individualized  by  the  convictions  of 
a  Puritanism  which  was  beginning  to  dominate  him, 
just  as  it  was  striving  to  dominate  his  country.  There 
may  have  been  less  spiritual  reasons;  the  times  were 
growing  hard,  and  money  was  not  to  be  had  so  much 


MILTON  299 

for  the  asking  as  it  had  been.  At  all  events,  home 
he  came,  and  settled  in  London,  and  fell  to  teaching 
his  nephews  and  the  rest;  and  from  that  time  on,  for 
years,  we  hear  little  more  of  him  as  a  poet.  In  the 
times  about  to  come,  there  was  other  business  than 
poetry  for  him;  and  he  was  Puritan  enough  to  feel 
that,  first  of  all,  he  must  do  his  duty. 

It  was  after  he  came  back  to  England,  and  before 
the  period  of  his  prose  and  his  sonnets,  that  he  wrote 
what  we  may  regard  as  the  last  record  of  his 
earlier  life.  While  he  was  abroad,  his  intimate  friend, 
the  half-Italian  Diodati,  had  died.  Edward  King, 
it  seems,  whose  death  Milton  commemorated  in 
"Lycidas,"  was  not  personally  very  near  to  him.  In 
that  great  elegy,  the  greatest  memorial  poem  of  our 
language,  we  might  accordingly  suppose  him  to  have 
chosen  the  conventional  pastoral  form  partly  because 
the  grief  it  celebrated  was  itself  in  some  degree 
conventional.  With  Diodati  the  case  was  different. 
Yet  when  Milton,  already  the  greatest  master  of  Eng- 
lish verse  then  living,  or  living  since,  set  himself  to 
the  heartfelt  task  of  making  a  poetic  monument  for 
the  friend  who  was  probably  his  dearest,  the  form  he 
chose  for  it  was  not  only  pastoral,  but  Latin,  too. 

In  those  days,  of  course,  Latin  was  still  the  common 
language  of  learning  and  of  culture  throughout  the 
European  world.  A  sound  reason  for  Milton's  choice 
of  it  might  consequently  be  found  in  the  fact  that  his 
Latin  verses  would  convey  their  meaning  not  only  to 


300   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

Englishmen,  but  to  all  the  elect  of  culture  every- 
where. To  outlive  bronze  or  marble,  he  may  have 
held,  literature  must  express  itself  in  the  terms 
which  had  already  survived  the  centuries.  And  those 
few  of  our  contemporaries  to  whom  the  Latin  lines 
still  speak  an  undying  and  living  language,  profess 
to  find  in  the  "Epitaphium  Damonis"  a  power  and  a 
passion  as  great  as  that  of  "Lycidas."  This  power 
and  passion,  they  declare,  is  combined  with  a  truly 
classical  severity  of  form  no  longer  mingled  with  the 
exuberant  luxuriance  of  the  Renaissance;  it  is  com- 
bined, too,  they  tell  us,  with  a  depth  of  personal  feeling 
which  fills  the  poem  not  only  with  dignity  and  with 
beauty,  but  with  the  added  humanity  of  pathos.  To 
those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  know  no  more  Latin  than 
most  of  us  learned  at  school,  what  seems  most  remark- 
able, and  consequently  most  deeply  characteristic, 
about  this  poem,  is  that  the  choice  for  a  deeply  sincere 
purpose  of  a  vehicle  so  doubly  conventional  as  a  Latin 
pastoral  proves  Milton,  beyond  anything  else  we  have 
touched  on,  a  poet  who  desired  less  to  express  his  im- 
pulses than  faultlessly  to  observe  the  principles  of  his 
art  as  the  doctrine  of  his  time  proclaimed  them. 

With  his  work  to  come  we  have  no  concern  now. 
That  belongs  rather  to  what  was  then  the  future  than 
to  what  was  then  the  past.  The  chief  literary  figure 
common  to  both  of  these  periods  is  this  Milton.  At 
his  early  career  we  have  now  glanced.  He  began 
his  work   in   the   later   years  of  the   elder   time;   he 


MILTON  301 

was  sensitive  to  all  its  finer  influences,  of  scholar- 
ship and  of  culture  alike;  he  was  not  so  consciously 
superior  to  its  mannerisms  as  the  final  isolation  of 
his  greatness  may  have  made  us  commonly  suppose; 
but  his  personality  was  so  strong  that  whatever  man- 
nerism he  copied  became  subtly  an  expression  of  him- 
self. And  this  self  of  his,  with  its  Puritan  seriousness 
and  austerity,  was  essentially  solitary.  And  the  times 
grew  troublous.  And  they  seemed  to  call  him  to  be 
up  and  doing,  otherwise  than  he  had  done  in  the 
gentle  retirement  of  his  youth  and  of  his  first  man- 
hood. And  he  made  his  final  monument  of  those 
elder  days  in  the  Latin  pastoral  which  commemo- 
rated, after  the  fashion  which  he  fancied  should  be 
most  lasting  of  all,  the  man  whom  in  those  days  he 
had  loved  best.  And  so  he  turned  his  face  from  the 
past,  to  the  present,  toward  the  future. 


XI 

THE  MATURITY  OF  MILTON 

It  may  seem  that  we  have  dwelt  too  long  on  the 
earlier  part  of  Milton's  career — on  the  years  when 
he  was  growing  to  the  complete  individuality  which 
has  left  in  our  literature  a  grander  record  than  any 
since,  or  than  we  can  quite  believe  destined  to  be  made 
by  any  poet  to  come.  Yet  the  earlier  years  of  life, 
though  rarely  the  most  significant,  are  apt  to  be  the 
the  most  important.  The  date  of  a  man's  birth  im- 
plies, as  nothing  else  can,  the  surroundings  amid 
which  he  grew  to  the  maturity. 

So  even  though  we  must  now  speed  on,  we  did 
well  to  recall  how  Milton  was  born  before  the  dis- 
integration of  his  century  had  forced  Puritanism 
into  that  place  apart  which  so  changed  the  course 
of  English  history;  and  how,  with  all  the  serious- 
ness of  cultured  Puritanism,  he  was  convinced  that, 
to  be  a  true  poet,  he  must  make  his  life  a 
true  poem.  We  did  well  to  recall  how  accordingly, 
while  still  a  youth,  he  became,  after  the  manner  of  his 
time,  a  master  of  classical  learning,  then  far  more 
humane    than    it    is    now;    and    how    among    Eng- 

302 


MILTON  303 

lish  writers  of  Latin  he  was  perhaps  the  most  vitally 
individual.  Above  all,  we  did  well  to  emphasize  how, 
meanwhile,  like  any  true  man  of  letters,  he  was  will- 
ingly sensitive  to  the  influences  of  contemporary 
literature  in  his  own  language — chiefly,  no  doubt,  to 
that  of  Spenser,  but  still  unmistakably  to  those  of 
Jonson,  and  Donne  as  well,  and  even  to  that  of  the 
drama;  how  he  steadily  revealed  his  individuality  by 
mastering  these  influences,  instead  of  being  mastered 
by  them,  as  lesser  men  were;  and  how,  all  the  while, 
the  disintegrating  tendency  of  his  time  made  him, 
despite  his  willing  freedom  from  the  eccentricity  of 
petty  talent,  not  the  dominant  figure  of  a  growing 
school  of  letters,  but  a  masterly  poet  more  and  more 
solitary  and  apart.  In  the  prophetic  indignation 
which  inspired  portions  of  "Lycidas,"  we  may  finally 
remember,  there  appeared  at  last  clear  token  that, 
amid  the  rising  troubles  of  the  time,  the  Puritanism 
of  Milton  was  passing  into  the  militant  form  peculiar 
to  the  seventeenth  century. 

There  we  left  him;  and  there,  in  a  way,  we  must 
take  our  farewell  of  him.  For  we  have  no  time  to 
linger  over  details  of  his  personal  history  during  the 
years  which  were  still  before  him,  nor  yet  to  dwell  on 
the  grand  beauties  of  the  later  works  which  have  won 
him  place  among  the  few  great  poets  of  all  time. 
We  have  time  only  for  a  glance  at  the  three  distinct 
records  of  his  later  years  which  remain  so  deeply  indi- 
vidual  and   impressive.      These,   of   course,   are  his 


304   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

prose  writings;  the  sonnets  which  at  intervals  re- 
vealed how  deeply  his  poetic  power  burned  all  the 
while  when  he  held  that  duty  bade  him  turn  aside 
from  poetry;  and  the  great  poems  of  his  blind  and 
retired  solitude.  Of  all  these  we  must  speak  hastily, 
touching  only  on  such  features  of  them  as  seem  essen- 
tial to  our  purpose  together. 

The  prose  works  of  Milton  which  are  most  gener- 
ally remembered  were  published  between  1641  and 
1649.  Only  one  of  them — the  "Areopagitica" — is 
much  read  nowadays;  but  the  names  of  all  are  familiar 
to  any  student  of  literature.  To  careless  students 
the  names  are  apt  to  seem  those  of  solitary  things — 
unlike  what  anyone  else  wrote.  Yet  whoever  will 
pause  to  consider  not  the  lasting  literature  of  Eng- 
land during  the  seventeenth  century,  but  its  printed 
records,  must  instantly  grow  aware  that  these  include 
an  enormous  and  bewildering  mass  of  controversial 
prose,  in  every  imaginable  form.  In  copiousness  and 
significance,  these  records  are  something  like  the 
newspapers  of  the  last  hundred  years.  Most  of  this 
old  controversial  prose  has  long  been  dead  and  gone; 
the  spark  which  keeps  some  of  Milton's  alive,  accord- 
ingly, makes  It  now  seem  a  thing  by  itself.  In  fact, 
however,  these  works  of  his,  in  their  own  time,  were 
only  his  earnest  and  passionate  contribution  to  a 
torrent  of  expression,  of  which  the  bulk  seems  limit- 
less. One  knows  not  whether  most  to  wonder  that 
none  of  the  rest  has  survived,  or  that  even  Milton's 


MILTON  305 

power  was  great  enough  to  give  lasting  life  to  a 
kind  of  writing  essentially  so  ephemeral. 

And,  on  the  whole,  as  you  ponder  on  this  prose 
of  Milton's,  together  with  the  dead  prose  which  was 
once  alive  about  it,  you  are  less  and  less  apt  to  feel 
much  difference  between  his  and  the  rest.  The 
"Areopagitica,"  we  have  just  seen,  has  survived  in  sub- 
stance,— a  fact  sometimes  held  due  to  the  circumstance 
that  so  much  of  it  is  incontestably  right.  Another  way 
of  stating  the  same  fact  would  be  to  say  that  here,  for 
once,  in  urging  something  like  liberty  of  opinion, 
Milton  chanced  upon  a  principle  which  the  history 
of  ensuing  centuries  has  happened  to  sustain.  A 
different  turn  of  history  might  conceivably  have  given 
similar  sanction  to  his  contentions  concerning  episco- 
pacy, or  marriage,  or  royalty;  and  have  withheld  his- 
toric sanction  from  those  which  concerned  liberty  of 
thought  and  of  expression.  More  and  more,  it  seems 
to  me,  these  prose  writings  of  his  group  themselves  his- 
torically together,  just  as  they  group  themselves  wnth 
other  and  similar  writings  of  their  own  day.  The  im- 
pulse of  them  all  was  the  impulse  on  which  we  touched 
so  frequently  when  we  were  trying  to  give  ourselves 
account  of  the  growth  and  of  the  surroundings  of 
seventeenth  century  Puritanism.  The  men  of  those 
years  found  themselves  possessed  by  the  conviction 
that  they  knew  what  was  absolutely  right;  and  that 
therefore  they  were  bound,  each  in  his  own  way,  to  set 
forth  what  was  rig-ht,  and  to  impose  it — if  by  any  effort 


3o6   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

it  might  be  imposed — on  the  errant  course  of  human 
rights.  For  rights,  everybody  agreed,  had  strayed  far 
from  forms  which  anyone's  conception  of  absolute 
right  could  sanction.  If  you  desire  concrete  examples 
of  the  kind  of  expression  which  I  had  in  mind  when  I 
touched  on  this  matter  before,  you  need  seek  no  fur- 
ther than  almost  any  of  Milton's  prose  writings. 
Open  your  volume  where  you  will;  it  is  all  one. 

In  general,  as  we  have  seen,  the  controversial  prose 
of  seventeenth  century  England  proved  futile.  On 
the  whole,  indeed,  so  far  as  positive  and  practical 
result  goes,  Milton's  proved  futile,  too.  What  has 
really  preserved  it,  in  tradition,  is  not  its  substance, 
but  rather  the  manner  in  which  now  and  again  that 
substance  is  set  forth.  Milton,  we  must  remember, 
belonged  to  an  age  when  English  prose  still  preserved 
some  of  its  pristine  freedom  from  the  trammels  of 
convention.  Though  no  longer  Elizabethan,  this  prose 
was  far  nearer  the  spacious  scope  of  the  elder  time  than 
was  any  form  of  English  poetry,  lyric  or  dramatic. 
And  indeed  one  may  fairly  doubt  whether  English 
prose  has  ever  been  in  a  state  more  fitted  to  express 
sincere  and  passionate  individuality.  So  while  in 
Milton's  prose  you  may  find  dull  passages  enough  and 
to  spare, — crabbed  passages,  too,  and  passages  dis- 
torted by  that  ugly  virulence  of  temper  which  was 
inseparable  from  the  acrimonies  of  his  time, — you  shall 
rarely  search  it  long  anywhere  without  coming  upon 
passages  which,  wherever  you  found  them,  you  would 


MILTON  307 

instantly  recognize  as  in  the  nobler  sense  Miltonic. 
They  are  not  fastidiously  beautiful;  they  are  far  from 
the  fantastic  grace  or  quaintness  which  make  so  much 
seventeenth  century  rhetoric  a  pleasant  toy  for  idle 
hours.  They  are  hardly  ever  captivating  or  winning. 
But,  with  a  sonorous  fervor  of  their  own,  they  are, 
in  every  sense  of  the  word,  admirable;  they  excite  your 
wonder,  they  excite  your  respect,  and  if  only  as  noble 
outbursts  of  English  eloquence  they  excite  your  ap- 
proval. There  is  nothing  else  like  them  in  our  lan- 
guage for  a  certain  austere  intensity  of  passion — an 
emotional  quality  so  distinct  from  their  meaning  that 
you  might  often  fancy  it  compatible  with  utterly 
different  convictions  and  purposes  from  those  which 
it  sets  forth. 

We  might  linger  long  over  this  emotional  indi- 
viduality of  Milton's — analyzing  it,  so  far  as  we  might; 
defining  it.  We  might  dwell,  too,  on  the  historically 
significant  fact  that  the  prose  style  of  Milton  is  per- 
haps the  last  noteworthy  example  in  English  litera- 
ture of  a  kind  of  expression  possible  only  when  prose 
was  still  free — not  yet  bound  by  acknowledged  prece- 
dent to  follow  convention.  We  might  study  in  some 
detail  the  almost  equally  important  fact  that  he  was 
among  the  last  writers  of  English  prose  who,  when 
moved  to  earnest  expression,  instinctively  thought  in 
Latin  terms ;  and  who  therefore  suffused  what  they 
supposed  to  be  vernacular  expression  with  such  sus- 
tained and  sonorous  rhythm  as  would  have  animated 


3o8   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

their  phrases  if  they  had  actually  written  Latin.  On 
the  whole,  however,  the  most  important  aspect  for 
us  of  Milton's  prose  is  one  which  concerns  its  sub- 
stance. 

In  essence,  we  have  seen  already,  this  substance  is 
not  very  different  from  that  of  the  copious  contro- 
versial writing  then  prevalent.  Amid  the  bewilder- 
ing confusion  of  the  times,  individuals,  believing  each 
in  his  own  that  they  knew  what  was  right,  at- 
tempted, each  with  his  own  limits,  to  persuade  others 
to  the  right  course.  Among  these  individuals  Milton 
was  the  most  remarkable.  He  was  no  more  free  from 
traces  of  the  epoch  when  he  lived  than  were  any  of 
the  rest;  you  can  detect  in  him  plenty  of  impatience, 
plenty  of  acerbity  and  virulence,  and  very  little 
serenity.  His  earnestness  was  deeply  Puritan,  in  that 
it  was  not  tempered  by  wide  human  sympathy,  nor  yet 
sweetened  with  humor.  But  amid  it  all  you  can  dis- 
cern in  his  individuality — more  clearly  perhaps  than 
in  that  of  any  of  his  contemporaries — the  aspect  of 
human  nature  which  made  Puritanism  at  once 
potent  and  futile.  From  his  very  youth,  we  saw, 
Milton's  nature  had  a  kind  of  purity — of  personal 
cleanness — which  would  have  marked  him,  in  any 
age,  as  one  apart  from  the  general  frailties  of  human- 
ity. Men  thus  apart  are  never  quite  able  to  under- 
stand the  kind  of  baseness  which  makes  the  earthly 
course  of  most  men  a  matter  of  painful  stum- 
bling.    Were  all  men  cast   in  such  mould,   human 


MILTON  309 

nature  would  not  be  the  thing  it  is,  nor  human  his- 
tory. 

The  precise  quahty  I  have  in  mind  is  most  evi- 
dent, perhaps,  in  that  part  of  Milton's  prose  writings 
which,  even  in  his  own  time,  got  him  most  into 
trouble, — his  utterances  concerning  marriage  and 
divorce,  evoked  by  his  far  from  peaceful  conjugal 
experience.  There  is  no  need  for  commenting  on 
them  in  detail,  nor  for  pointing  out  how  remote  his 
opinions  were  from  that  dogmatic  assertion  of  equal- 
ity between  men  and  women  which  happens  to  be  so 
popular  nowadays.  The  important  fact  for  us  to  re- 
mark is  that,  so  long  as  men  in  general  remain  what 
men  have  been  throughout  recorded  history,  the  kind 
of  marital  freedom  urged  by  Milton  could  result,  so 
far  as  any  common-sense  may  assert,  only  in  socially 
destructive  licentiousness.  Were  most  men  Miltons 
the  case  would  be  otherwise.  He  never  seems  quite 
to  have  understood  how  far  from  Miltons  most  men 
have  been,  and  are.  And  so,  in  urging  a  reform 
which,  in  his  own  case,  might  really  have  solved  a 
social  problem,  he  unwittingly  argued  for  a  state  of 
society  which  is  beyond  the  scope  and  power  of  ordi- 
nary human  nature. 

What  was  thus  true  of  Milton's  argument  concern- 
ing marriage  and  divorce  seems,  on  the  whole,  true  of 
all  his  contentions  for  reform,  from  beginning  to  end ; 
indeed  it  is  apt  to  be  true  of  earnest  reformers  through- 
out time.     The  greatest  infirmity  of  noble  minds,  it 


3IO   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

often  seems,  is  that  they  cannot  understand  the  greater 
infirmity  of  minds  which  are  not,  and  which  never  can 
be,  noble.  The  Calvinism  of  the  Puritans,  to  be  sure, 
frankly  and  explicitly  asserted  that  human  nature  is 
radically  base.  But  when  the  Puritans  themselves 
became  militant  reformers,  they  could  not  quite  avoid 
the  pitfall  of  militant  reform  throughout  history.  An 
earnest  reformer,  even  though  graced  with  humility  of 
spirit, — and  humility  never  seems  to  have  been  the 
chief  spiritual  grace  of  Milton, — is  bound  to  conceive 
his  opinions  to  be  those  of  the  elect.  If  he  proceeds  to 
impose  those  principles  on  other  men,  he  attempts 
tyrannically  to  hold  these  others  to  a  standard  above 
that  of  human  nature.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  he 
appeals  to  them,  in  the  hope  of  stirring  them  to  ac- 
quiescence, he  assumes  that  their  nature  is  higher 
than  in  fact  he  shall  ever  find  it.  In  either  case,  he  is 
doomed  to  tragic  failure;  he  is  forced  in  the  end 
apart.  His  voice  may  echo  down  the  ages,  exhorting 
still,  even  till  time  ends;  but  those  who  dream  that 
Utopias  can  be  anything  but  dreams  may  never  wake 
except  to  disappointment  and  to  solitude. 

Of  Milton's  prose  I  can  say  no  more.  If  these 
cursory  words  have  helped  to  show  its  place  in 
the  temperamental  history  of  England,  if  they  have 
shown  how  far  it  goes  to  exemplify  our  generaliza- 
tions concerning  the  Puritans,  they  will  have  done  all 
that  we  can  now  hope  for.  We  must  turn,  in  the 
same  way,  to  Milton's  brief  and  few  poetic  utterances 


MILTON  311 

meanwhile.     These  are  the  great  sonnets  which  will 
always  be  among  the  glories  of  our  literature. 

Among  all  his  work,  it  seems  to  me,  no  part  more 
clearly  reveals  his  dominant  individuality.  If  one  may 
characterize  this  individuality,  as  it  appears  in  litera- 
ture, by  any  single  word,  the  word  for  it  is  perhaps 
masterly.  Other  poets  now  and  again  accept  con- 
ventions, and  imitate  them,  and  perhaps  improve 
them.  Others  deliberately  break  from  convention, 
striving  for  novelty,  for  oddity,  for  eccentricity,  for 
whatever  may  seem  peculiarly  their  own.  Now,  from 
the  beginning,  Milton  was  eager  to  learn  all  he  could 
from  the  great  and  good  who  had  preceded  him;  but 
he  used  his  learning  and  his  culture  to  express  a  mean- 
ing so  distinctly  his  own  that  his  finally  written  words 
seem  assertively  Miltonic.  Even  in  his  early  Spenser- 
ian verses,  one  thinks  first  of  Milton;  it  is  only  when 
one  begins  to  ponder  that  one  feels  how  surely  the 
influence  of  Spenser  pervades  the  lines  and  the 
rhythm.  And  this  is  more  true  still  of  those  passages 
in  his  early  work  which  reveal  the  influences  of  Jon- 
son  and  of  Donne.  And  "Comus"  is  first  of  all  a  Mil- 
tonic  poem — not  an  English  masque;  and  if  we  were 
considering  merely  the  history  of  English  pastorals 
it  might  be  almost  a  surprise  to  find  that  among  the 
rest  we  must  study  so  individually  Miltonic  a  poem  as 
"Lycidas."  Milton's  prose,  too,  shows  how  his  indi- 
viduality could  pervade  and  waken  into  lasting  life  a 
kind  of  expression  which  in  every  other  case  than  his 


512   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

withered  almost  as  soon  as  the  actual  occasion  of  it 
became  a  matter  of  the  past.  In  the  sonnets,  this 
masterly  power  is  at  its  height. 

No  English  lyrics,  I  think,  more  clearly  illustrate 
that  modern  definition  of  lyric  poetry  which  holds  it 
to  be  essentially  subjective — an  expression  of  what 
the  poet  actually  thinks  and  feels.  The  old  sonnets  of 
Italy,  the  sonnets  in  general  of  Elizabethan  England, 
and  even  the  Italian  sonnets  which  Milton  himself 
made  during  his  sojourn  in  the  regions  from  which 
all  our  modern  civilization  has  sprung,  are  at  best 
pleasantly  artificial.  As  works  of  art,  they  are  now 
and  again  very  beautiful;  now  and  again,  you  are 
moved  to  wonder  whether  Sidney,  or  Shakspere,  or 
whoever  else,  was  not  perhaps  using  this  exquisitely 
ingenious  vehicle  to  express  not  conventional  but  pas- 
sionately sincere  emotion.  Yet  I  am  tempted  to  say 
that  until  Milton's  own  time  you  can  never  feel  quite 
sure,  either  in  England  or  in  Italy  itself,  of  how  gen- 
uine a  given  sonnet  is.  Again  and  again  you  are  sure 
that  one  of  these  little  poems  is  a  thing  of  beauty 
containing  deathless  phrases;  yet  all  the  while  you 
are  equally  sure  that  it  is  a  deliberate  and  a  very 
elaborate  work  of  rigidly  conventional  art.  With 
Milton's  sonnets  the  case  is  altogether  different. 
Your  first  impression  is  sure  to  be  that  the  poet  meant 
every  word  he  set  down.  He  meant  it,  no  doubt, 
with  very  different  degrees  of  intensity;  some  of  the 
sonnets  are  hardly  more  than  occasional  poems;  two 


MILTON  313 

or  three  reveal  the  uglier  phases  of  temper  with  which 
the  virulent  controversies  of  Milton's  time  disfigured, 
many  passages  of  his  prose;  but  the  best  of  them  ex- 
press heartfelt  meaning  with  a  fulness  of  mastery 
which  makes  one  forget  that  they  are  sonnets  at  all. 

You  can  find  all  these  characteristics  in  the  sonnet 
"On  His  Blindness,"  often  held  his  best: 

When  I  consider  how  my  light  is  spent 

Ere  half  my  days  in  this  dark  world  and  wide, 
And  that  one  Talent  which  is  death  to  hide 

Lodged  with  me  useless,  though  my  soul  more  bent 

To  serve  therewith  my  Maker,  and  present 
My  true  account,  lest  He  returning  chide, 
"Doth  God  exact  day-labour,  Hght  denied?" 

I  fondly  ask.      But  Patience,  to  prevent 

That  murmur,  soon  replies,  "God  doth  not  need 
Either  man's  work  or  his  own  gifts.     Who  best 
Bear  his  mild  yoke,  they  serve  him  best.     His  state 

Is  kingly:  thousands  at  his  bidding  speed, 
And  post  o'er  land  and  ocean  without  rest; 
They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait." 

As  you  ponder  over  these  lines,  you  cannot  but  feel 
how  they  show  his  thorough  knowledge  of  the  intri- 
cate sonnet  form,  together  with  his  masterful  disdain 
of  its  finer  technical  niceties — of  quatrain,  octave,  ses- 
tet, and  the  like.  You  cannot  help  feeling,  either, 
how  their  involved  syntax  shows  his  Latin  habit  of 
thought.  Yet,  for  all  this,  the  poem  seems  as  sincere 
an  expression  of  personal  feeling  as  you  can  find  in 
any  autobiography  or  confession. 


314   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

He  had  done  his  active  service  by  this  time — to  the 
state  which  for  a  while  the  Puritans  had  dreamed 
might  replace  the  England  of  the  past  by  an  utterly 
regenerate  England  for  all  the  future.  And  history 
was  speeding  fast.  Before  long  the  Protector  was 
dead;  and  it  was  not  much  longer  before  the  Restora- 
tion. A  final  darkness  had  fallen  not  only  on  the  eyes 
of  Milton,  but  on  that  Elizabethan  England  in  which 
he  was  born,  and  on  that  Puritan  England  too  which 
he  had  hoped  to  see  established  in  its  place.  And  it 
was  amid  this  darkness  that  he  made  at  last  the  poem 
which  none  but  he  could  possibly  have  made.  For  as 
surely  as  Spenser  is  the  maker  of  the  ''Faerie 
Queene,"  Milton  is  the  maker  of  "Paradise  Lost." 
That  would  remain,  if  all  the  rest  vanished. 

Beyond  the  work  which  came  before,  and  I  am 
tempted  to  say  beyond  any  other  great  work  in  liter- 
ature, this  colossal  epic  stands  apart.  The  more  you 
study  Shakspere's  plays,  the  more  close  and  intricate 
you  find  their  relations  to  the  literature  of  their  time; 
the  more  normal  they  seem,  for  all  their  wonderful 
power.  And  glancing  on  to  the  third  great  figure  in 
the  history  of  English  literature  during  this  seven- 
teenth century,  you  can  assure  yourself  that  Dryden 
too  was  a  man  of  a  school,  which  he  perhaps  founded 
and  certainly  dominated;  he  was  never  a  great  figure 
apart.  Even  in  Milton's  earlier  work, — to  that  very 
sonnet,  indeed,  in  which  he  so  solemnly  recorded  the 
sealing  of  his  eyes, — you  can  feel,  together  with  all  his 


MILTON  315 

masterful  individuality,  trace  after  trace  of  the  litera- 
ture about  him.  We  have  remarked  the  relations 
of  Milton's  early  poems  to  the  work  of  the  elder  poets 
— Spenser,  and  Donne,  and  Jonson;  to  that  of  some 
of  the  dramatists,  as  well,  in  their  loftier  moments; 
we  have  seen  how  he  was  affected  by  the  literatures 
of  antiquity  and  of  Italy,  and  by  the  torrent  of  con- 
troversial prose  which  flowed  before  and  about  his 
prose  utterances.  Throughout,  we  have  felt  how 
his  individuality,  always  inevitably  assertive,  was 
strengthening.  In  his  later  period  this  individuality 
had  become  something  utterly  apart — until  "Paradise 
Lost"  seems  something  almost  superhuman. 

Superhuman,  I  mean,  in  its  isolation,  in  its  grand 
solitude.  One  cannot  too  often  repeat  that  it  is  in 
nowise  eccentric  or  abnormal,  that  it  never  seems 
deliberately  different  from  what  other  men  may  have 
attempted.  Nothing  could  be  much  more  remote 
from  the  kind  of  oddity  which  now  and  again  belittles 
much  nineteenth  century  literature,  in  England  and 
America  aHke.  Carlyle  is  great,  if  you  like,  and  so 
is  Browning;  so  is  Emerson;  so,  perhaps,  in  his  own 
way,  is  that  anarchistic  Walt  Whitman.  But  each  is 
great,  if  great  he  be,  in  spite  of  his  manner  of  expres- 
sion. No  doubt,  the  distorted  style  of  each  may  be 
due  to  some  pitiable  mental  peculiarity,  analogous  to 
physical  deformity;  but  nothing  can  prevent  it  from 
seeming  deliberate.  One  and  all  of  these  moderns 
set  forth  their  meaning  in  a  kind  of  pervasive  falsetto 


3i6   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

screech,  uttered  by  each  in  his  own  discordant  way, 
as  if  to  attract  attention  to  himself.  In  Milton  there 
is  never  a  trace  of  any  such  thing.  "Paradise  Lost" 
no  more  suggests  intentional  oddity  than  his  early 
poems  do,  in  their  willing  acceptance  of  all  the  aids 
w^hich  convention  could  give  them.  It  only  reveals,  in 
a  grandeur  and  a  loneliness  unspeakably  superb  and 
pathetic,  the  finally  inevitable  individuality  of  the  one 
great  poet  who  found  his  life  and  his  lot  cast  in  the 
disintegrant  times  of  the  English  Puritans.  So  in  the 
literature  w-hich  came  before  it  there  is  nothing  to 
which  we  can  instantly  feel  it  similar;  nor  yet,  and  still 
more  obviously,  is  there  anything  similar  to  it  in  the 
literature  which  came  to  light  during  the  years  when 
it  was  making;  and  there  is  nothing  quite  like  it, 
either,  in  the  literature  of  the  centuries  which  have 
ensued.  Milton's  manner,  no  doubt,  has  been  imi- 
tated by  admirers  in  later  times;  yet  none  of  these, 
I  think,  has  in  the  least  found  the  secret  which  makes 
every  line  of  Milton  Miltonic.  Milton  really  stands 
alone — the  one  true  poet  of  the  national  disintegra- 
tion of  England. 

This  does  not  in  the  least  mean  that  the  solitude  of 
"Paradise  Lost"  is  monstrous  or  at  all  miraculous. 
Its  solitude,  indeed,  as  I  have  tried  to  point  out, 
marks  the  poem  as  a  normal  product  of  Milton's 
own  time — a  time  when  the  elder  solidarities  were 
gone,  and  the  newer  still  to  come.  And  the  very- 
nature  of  its  fable,  to  say  nothing  of  the  allusions 


MILTON  317 

throughout  its  course,  marks  it  by  the  width  of  heaven 
apart  from  those  occasional  works  of  later  poetry 
which  pride  themselves  on  eccentric  originality  of  in- 
vention. It  is  conceivable,  indeed,  that  "Paradise 
Lost"  may  have  been  in  some  degree  instigated,  or 
suggested,  by  Sylvester's  translation  of  Du  Bartas ; 
it  is  perhaps  possible  that  Milton's  imagination  may 
have  been  stimulated  by  some  Dutch  poem  of  Von- 
del's;  and  so  on.  That,  if  this  be  true,  "Paradise 
Lost"  transcends  all  traces  of  its  lesser  origins,  until 
those  origins  become  a  matter  of  mere  curiosity,  only 
marks  the  poem  as  great.  All  great  poems  do  the 
like. 

What  marks  its  greatness  almost  uniquely  is  the  re- 
lation it  bears  to  those  grand  originals  which  show 
their  traces  throughout.  The  fable,  of  course,  is  taken 
from  the  very  beginning  of  Scripture  itself.  The  nar- 
rative throughout  is  enriched  by  endless  allusion  both 
to  the  whole  course  of  Scripture  and  to  almost  the 
whole  range  of  classical  learning — to  the  acknowl- 
edged masterpieces  of  antique  literature  which  have 
outlasted  the  centuries  and  emerged  into  the  serene 
loftiness  of  immortality.  Any  poet  can  take  his  fable 
from  Scripture,  and  can  fill  his  verse  with  allusions  to 
the  great  poetry  of  the  past.  It  is  the  lot,  the  while, 
of  almost  every  modern  poet  but  Milton — of  all  the 
others,  I  am  tempted  to  say,  except  Dante,  already 
in  Milton's  time  as  immortal  as  he  is  to-day — that 
when,  even  for  an  instant,  you  compare  their  work 


3i8   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

with  its  supreme  sources,  you  instantly  feel  that  those 
sources  welled  far  richer  than  the  streams  diverted 
from  them,  Shakspere,  with  colossal  ease,  could 
make  permanent  literature  of  his  quaint  mediaeval 
chronicles  and  stories;  he  could  marvellously  vitalize 
Plutarch,  too;  but  in  "Troilus  and  Cressida,"  the 
only  play  where  he  comes  near  measuring  him- 
self with  Homer  or  with  any  great  precursor, 
you  feel  that,  for  all  the  glories  of  Shaksperean 
poetry,  Shakspere  presents  a  Trojan  War  which 
is  far  beneath  the  heights  of  the  Iliad.  And  what 
happens  to  lesser  men  anyone  can  see  who  will 
compare  the  various  modern  plays  and  poems  con- 
cerning Francesca  da  Rimini  with  the  supreme  pas- 
sage, in  the  fifth  canto  of  Dante's  'Tnferno,"  where 
her  story  was  first  and  finally  told. 

With  Milton,  the  case  is  wonderfully  different.  Read 
Scripture,  if  you  will,  and  then  turn  to  your  "Paradise 
Lost."  Turn  then  to  whatever  poet  you  chance  to 
love  of  Greek  antiquity  or  of  Roman.  Turn  to  Dante 
himself,  who  alone  among  modern  poets  had  risen  in 
Milton's  time  to  something  like  the  serene  eminence  in 
which  men  now  discern  the  great  poets  of  antiquity. 
Then  turn  back  to  Milton.  Different,  you  will  find  him, 
no  doubt,  in  the  austere  isolation  of  his  masterful  and 
deliberate  Puritanism  and  learning;  but  that  differ- 
ence does  not  make  him  irrevocably  lesser.  Rather 
you  will  grow  more  and  more  to  feel  how  wonderful 


MILTON  319 

his  power  proves.  Almost  alone  among  poets,  he 
could  take  the  things  for  which  he  had  need  from  the 
masters  themselves,  as  confidently  as  any  of  the  mas- 
ters had  taken  such  matters  from  lesser  men;  and 
he  could  so  place  these  spoils  of  masterpieces  in  his 
own  work  that  they  seem  as  truly  and  as  admirably 
part  of  it  as  they  seemed  of  the  other  great  works 
where  he  found  them. 

His  own  work,  of  course,  in  the  fulness  of  his 
maturity,  was  more  his  own  than  ever.  Throughout 
it  you  feel  all  the  characteristics  of  which  we  have 
been  trying  to  trace  the  growth — the  Puritan  seri- 
ousness of  his  earliest  and  constant  purpose;  his  love 
of  austere  yet  luxuriant  beauty  of  form;  his  mastery 
of  classical  learning,  as  classical  learning  existed 
in  his  seventeenth  century;  his  wide  and  deliber- 
ately mastered  erudition ;  and  the  embittered  Puri- 
tanism which  marked  almost  all  English  Puritans  of 
the  days  of  struggle  and  of  failure.  You  feel  him 
throughout  a  true  poet;  but  a  poet  singular  among 
the  great  ones  for  a  deliberation,  for  a  lack  of  appar- 
ent spontaneity,  which  in  almost  any  other  man 
could  hardly  have  broken  through  the  limits  of  superb 
rhetoric  into  the  free  air  of  lasting  literature.  Of  all 
English  poetic  styles,  his  is  the  least  inevitable,  the 
most  magnificently  artificial,  the  furthest  from  un- 
thinking utterance.  It  is  full  of  music,  but  the  music 
is  not  vocal;  it  is  more  like  that  which  immensely 


320   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

skilful  hands  can  evoke  from  the  incredibly  complex 
mechanism  of  some  vast  church  organ.  And  yet  the 
phrases  never  sink  to  the  level  of  mere  convention; 
they  are  as  distinctly,  as  irrevocably  Milton's  as  was 
that  blind  solitude  in  the  midst  of  which  they  were 
made. 

All  the  while,  too,  "Paradise  Lost"  remains  a  nor- 
mal human  thing,  in  that  it  is  truly  a  work  of  its 
own  time.  Not  long  ago,  I  was  turning  its  pages 
in  Italy,  the  country  where  Milton  passed  the  months 
which  one  may  guess  to  have  been  the  pleasantest  of 
his  earthly  life.  A  marvelous  place,  that  Italy,  with  its 
immortally  beautiful  landscapes  enshrining  countless 
relics  of  mortal  beauty — the  grandeurs  of  ruined 
Rome,  the  quaint  distorted  splendors  of  the  ages 
they  used  to  call  dark,  the  buoyant  fine  art  of  the 
resurgent  Renaissance,  the  fantastic  excesses  of  its 
luxuriant  decline.  As  I  read  my  Milton  in  Italy, 
I  grew  aware  that  the  images  which  so  grandly 
consoled  his  blindness  seemed  unlike  those  of  the 
great  Italian  days.  And  yet  they  were  such  as  any 
traveller  in  Italy  must  often  see.  They  were  very 
like  the  figures  and  the  landscapes  which  make  the 
visible  traces  of  seventeenth  century  Italy,  left  by 
hands  never  themselves  masterly,  things  from  which 
we  are  apt  to  turn  aside  with  some  shade  of  disdain. 

Such  impressions,  no  doubt,  are  too  personal  for  as- 
sertion as  true.  But  take  at  random  some  lines  in 
which  Milton  sets  forth  the  wonders  of  Eden; 


MILTON  321 

Groves  whose  rich  trees  wept  odorous  gums  and  balm; 
Others  whose  fruit  burnished  with  golden  rind 

Hung  amiable — Hesperian  fables  true 

Betwixt  them  lawns,  or  level  downs,  and  flocks 
Grazing  the  tender  herb,  were  interposed, 
On  palmy  hillock;  or  the  flowery  lap 
Of  some  irriguous  valley  spread  her  store, 
Flowers  of  all  hue,  and  without  thorn  the  rose. 
Another  side,  umbrageous  grots  and  caves 
Of  cool  recess,  o'er  which  the  mantling  vine 
Lays  forth  her  purple  grape,  and  gently  creeps 
Luxuriant;  meanwhile  murmuring  waters  fall 
Down  the  slope  hills  dispersed,  or  in  a  lake, 
That  to  the  fringed  bank  with  myrtle  crowned 
Her  crystal  mirror  holds,  unite  their  streams. 

Try  to  visualize  that  landscape,  and  you  will  be 
more  ingenious  than  I  if  you  can  make  it  take  much 
other  form  than  you  may  see  in  the  background  of 
some  Bolognese  picture  of  Diana  and  her  nymphs. 
Fancy,  if  you  can,  some  sculptured  Miltonic  Adam  or 
Satan;  and  see  whether  the  form  is  not  strangely  Hke 
those  colossally  distorted  ones  which  the  Italians 
made  in  Bernini's  time  and  after.  Try  to  translate 
Milton's  Eve  into  terms  of  painting;  and  tell  yourself 
truly  whether  you  can  make  those  terms  differ  much 
from  the  manner  we  now  think  decadently  artificial  on 
the  canvasses  of  Guido  Reni  or  of  the  Caracci.  When 
I  said  all  this  to  the  friend  w4io  chanced  to  be  with  me, 
he  waxed  a  little  warm;  for  he  was  accustomed  to  rev- 
erence Milton,  and  thought  me  almost  blasphemous. 


322   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

Nothing  could  have  been  further  from  my  purpose. 
What  impressed  me  most  was  not  that  Milton  thus 
showed  how  in  life,  like  every  wholesome  man,  he  was 
himself  a  man  of  the  days  when  he  walked  the  earth. 
It  was  rather  that  the  grave,  austere  earnestness  of 
his  mastered  purpose  surged  so  supremely  strong. 
Amid  his  century  of  artifice  and  of  cultured  affecta- 
tion, he  was  thus  able,  without  disdaining  contempo- 
rary terms,  to  make  a  supremely  noble  poem.  In  rev- 
erent admiration  of  its  nobility  one  no  more  stops  to 
remark  its  artifices  than  one  stops  to  remember  its 
origins. 

If  "Paradise  Lost"  were  all  that  was  left  of  his  work, 
or  indeed  if  all  we  possessed  were  only  some  colossal 
fragments  of  "Paradise  Lost,"  Milton  would  still  be 
Milton.  It  is  not  that  the  two  other  great  works  of 
his  later  years — "Paradise  Regained"  and  "Samson 
Agonistes" — would  not  repay  deep  and  loving  study. 
It  is  rather  that,  when  we  are  speeding  on  as  we  must 
speed  now,  they  add,  I  think,  no  new  feature  to  the 
austere  and  solitary  individuality  which  we  have  been 
trying  to  define  together.  Puritan  from  the  begin- 
ning Milton  was,  in  the  lofty  seriousness  of  his  pur- 
pose; Puritan  he  proved  himself  more  surely  still,  in 
that  passionate  interval  of  his  life  when  all  his  ener- 
gies were  given  to  the  cause  which  he  longed,  with 
his  fellow-Puritans,  each  in  his  own  divergent  way,  to 
make  dominant;  Puritan  most  of  all  he  seems  in  the 
sad  and  blind  retirement  of  those  later  years  when 


MILTON  323 

the  dominance  of  Puritanism  was  fatally  past.  His- 
tory had  surged  beyond  Puritan  control;  the  only  re- 
source left  Milton  was  to  enshrine  the  spiritual  mean- 
ing of  his  faith  in  his  own  austere,  unwinsome, 
deathlessly  noble  terms.  Thereby  he  enriched  Eng- 
lish literature  with  a  kind  of  masterly  poetry  as 
unlike  all  others  as  were  the  man  and  the  age  which 
brought  it  forth. 

When  the  great  poems  were  made,  to  be  sure,  the 
age  which  truly  inspired  them  was  already  a  thing  of 
the  past.  In  strict  chronology,  they  belong  to  the 
years  when  Pepys  was  writing  his  diary,  and  Butler's 
"Hudibras"  was  in  the  full  freshness  of  its  trivial  popu- 
larity. The  new  literature  of  the  Restoration  was 
springing  into  its  unlovely  being,  and  other  forces 
were  at  work  which  were  finally  to  ripen  into  modern 
literature.  Decadent  beyond  what  had  come  before 
this  new  phase  of  English  expression  may  well  seem 
by  itself.  In  truth,  however,  it  was  tending  toward 
the  approaching  reintegration  of  national  temper  in  its 
modern  form.  With  all  that,  so  far  as  we  can  touch 
on  it  at  all,  we  must  concern  ourselves  later.  Now 
we  can  only  glance  at  it,  as  it  helps  us  to  define  the 
lofty  surviving  isolation  of  Milton. 

For  with  Milton,  as  I  have  tried  to  make  increas- 
ingly clear,  this  isolation  was  not  only,  and  perhaps 
not  chiefly,  a  matter  of  temperament  or  of  choice.  In 
Elizabethan  days  the  national  temper  of  England  was 
an  integral  thing — vv'ith  its  spontaneity,  its  enthusiasm, 


324   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

and  its  versatility.  We  have  traced  the  disintegration 
of  it,  in  various  forms,  during  the  years  v^hen 
EHzabethan  England  faded  into  the  past,  and  when 
the  tide  of  Puritanism  rose,  and  when  the  passions  of 
men,  on  every  side,  were  stirred  by  fierce  and  futile 
efforts  to  make  right  control  rights  and  to  turn  the 
course  of  history.  It  was  during  these  days  that 
Milton  grew  into  his  consciousness,  and  his  increas- 
ing, deliberate  mastery  of  his  powers.  His  earliest 
poems,  the  precocious  psalms  of  his  boyhood,  seem 
to  have  been  written  just  about  the  time  when  King 
Charles  came  to  the  throne;  and  "Lycidas"  was 
written  toward  the  end  of  1637.  Those  were  the 
years  when  the  drama  was  declining,  when  lyric  poetry 
was  specializing  and  weakening,  when  prose,  de- 
spite its  freedom,  was  tending  to  express  no  longer 
the  temper  of  the  nation  but  only  isolated  individ- 
uality. Then  came  the  second  stage  of  Milton's  life, 
when  he  made  his  prose  and  his  sonnets;  when  public 
duties,  for  a  while,  took  him  altogether  from  litera- 
ture, and  left  him  blind  at  last.  This  period  embraces 
the  next  twenty  years — from  1640,  we  may  hastily  say, 
till  1660.  A  mere  glance  at  any  tables  which  record 
the  publications  of  those  years  will  reveal  the  con- 
fusion which  pervaded  them. 

We  can  sum  up,  in  a  way,  the  characteristics  which 
mark  all  Elizabethan  utterances  as  Elizabethan.  So, 
turning  to  a  later  time,  we  can  sum  up,  in  some  man- 
ner  of   intelligible  phrase,   the   characteristics   which 


MILTON  325 

make  the  utterances  of  the  eighteenth  century  distinct 
from  those  which  came  before  or  from  those  which 
have  followed.  But  to  sum  up  in  any  phrase  which 
should  generalize  their  individualities  the  men  who 
published  during  these  twenty  years  of  Milton's  busy 
activity  would  be  little  short  of  a  miracle.  Here  are 
some  of  the  names  of  them:  Sir  Thomas  Browne, 
Denham,  Fuller,  Davenant,  Jeremy  Taylor,  Francis 
Ouarles,  Waller,  Crashaw,  Vaughan,  Herrick,  Love- 
lace, Andrew  Marvell,  Richard  Baxter,  Hobbes,  Izaak 
Walton,  and  Cowley. 

Individual  these  men  may  well  seem — more  indi- 
vidual, at  first  glance,  than  the  greater  ones  of  the 
greater  days  which  came  before;  but  not,  like  those 
elder  men,  brethren.  Nor  yet  were  they  quite  breth- 
ren of  their  contemporary,  Milton,  whose  very  indi- 
viduality and  isolation,  we  can  begin  to  see,  was  the 
characteristic  which  proves  him  most  conclusively  a 
true  man  of  his  time. 

For  the  age  of  Shakspere,  which  was  past,  had  been 
an  integral  age;  and  the  age  of  Dryden,  which  was  to 
come,  was  to  be  an  integral  age,  too.  In  passing 
from  one  to  the  other,  England  was  forced  through 
a  period  of  spiritual  disintegration;  and  in  this  period 
there  chanced  to  live  the  one  English  poet,  since 
Shakspere,  who  is  incontestably  and  forever  among 
the  lastingly  great  poets  of  literature.  And  this  he 
could  not  have  been  unless  he  had  been,  in  his  earthly 
Hfe,  a  man  of  the  days  through  which  it  was  his  lot  to 


326   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

live.  Nor  could  he  have  been  a  man  of  those  swiftly 
changing  days  if  the  features  of  him,  as  we  see  him 
now,  in  the  lengthening  perspective  of  the  centuries, 
were  not  individual  above  all  things  else — grave,  lofty, 
austere,  deliberate,  noble,  and  Wind. 

To  speak  of  him  with  any  shade  of  comprehensive- 
ness has  been  impossible.  All  I  can  hope  is  that 
these  hasty  words  may  have  helped  you  to  see  him 
a  little  more  clearly,  in  his  historical  relations,  than 
you  might  have  seen  him  without  them. 


XII 

THE  AGE  OF   DRYDEN 

The  task  left  us  is  to  sum  up,  as  best  we  can,  the 
literary  history  of  England  during  the  last  forty  years 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  These  years  began  with 
the  Restoration  of  King  Charles  II. ;  they  included  his 
inglorious  reign  and  the  expulsion  of  James  II.  from 
the  throne;  and  they  ended  under  the  constitutional 
sovereignty  of  King  William  III.  The  very  names  of 
these  sovereigns,  repeated  by  rote  as  children  learn  them, 
tell  the  story  of  the  change  in  English  temper  which 
had  occurred  since  1642,  when  the  Civil  Wars  broke 
out.  In  the  perspective  of  time  this  change  seems  the 
most  critical  in  all  English  history.  For  the  England 
of  the  elder  days — the  England  before  the  Common- 
wealth— seems  an  old,  strange  England ;  and  that  which 
came  after  the  Commonwealth  seems,  in  little  more 
than  an  old-fashioned  way,  the  England  which  is  Eng- 
land still. 

It  was  during  the  earlier  of  the  years  at  which  we 
must  now  glance  so  quickly  that  Milton  was  making 
his  great  poems.  They  are  the  lasting  and  surviving 
expression  of  a  period  which  was  past  when  he  wrote 

327 


328   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

them,  a  period  which  had  finally  vanished  when  the 
Restoration  proved  that  the  dreams  of  the  Puritans 
could  not  control  the  course  of  history.  As  we  re- 
marked when  we  turned  from  these  poems  to  glance 
at  their  environment,  it  was  during  the  years  which 
produced  them  that  Pepys  was  writing  his  diary. 

Pepys  was  born  ten  years  before  the  Civil  Wars 
broke  out.  When  King  Charles  met  his  end,  Pepys 
was  only  sixteen  years  old.  When  the  diary  begins, 
in  the  year  1660,  he  was  not  quite  twenty-eight;  and 
when  he  left  off  writing  it,  he  was  hardly  thirty-seven. 
Somehow  one  is  apt  to  think  of  him  rather  as  an  oldish 
man — which,  indeed,  he  lived  to  be.  But,  in  fact, 
these  memoranda  of  which  the  deciphering  has  made 
him  the  most  intimately  familiar  of  all  Englishmen, 
were  jotted  down  almost  from  his  youth  and  ended 
very  early  in  his  middle  age.  What  they  really  record, 
with  unique  minuteness  of  fidelity,  is  the  aspect  in 
which  daily  life  presented  itself  to  an  extraordinarily 
curious  and  busy  young  man  who  had  grown  to  his 
maturity,  such  as  it  was,  during  the  Commonwealth, 
and  who  had  not  the  strength,  even  if  he  had  been  so 
inclined,  to  resist  the  influences  about  him  during  the 
first  ten  years  of  the  Restoration.  He  had  a  remark- 
able power  of  perceiving  whatever  chanced  to  come 
uppermost  in  his  consciousness, — whether  this  were  a 
matter  of  fact,  or  an  opinion,  or  merely  some  passing 
reflection, — and  of  jotting  down  his  daily  notes  in 
terms  which  instantly  convey  his  state  of  mind  to  the 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  329 

minds  of  other  people.  Other  people,  to  be  sure,  were 
never  meant  to  read  these  records.  There  are  moods 
in  which,  through  all  the  endless  entertainment  they 
so  surely  afford,  you  feel  some  such  twinges  of  self- 
respecting  conscience  as  you  feel  when  you  do  not  resist 
temptation  to  overhear  chattily  confidential  talk.  But 
you  catch  so  much  of  Pepys's  own  mood,  the  while, 
that  you  are  not  disposed  to  let  the  niceties  of  con- 
science hamper  you.  And  so,  w4th  his  help,  you  get, 
by  and  by,  perhaps  the  most  vivid  impression  of  a 
past  time  which  you  can  get  from  any  book  in  the 
world.  You  feel  almost  as  if  you  had  actually  lived 
through  those  seventeenth  century  years  which  Pepys 
has  kept  alive. 

They  were  old-fashioned  years,  you  feel, — quaint, 
both  in  their  daily  conduct  and  in  their  phrases. 
This  quaintness,  indeed,  is  what  disposes  us  unthink- 
ingly to  fancy  Pepys  so  much  older  a  man  than  he 
actually  was.  But  this  very  tendency  indicates  what 
in  the  end  I  cannot  but  feel  the  most  significant 
aspect  of  the  diary.  The  pages  impress  you  like  the 
garrulously  confidential  talk  of  some  entertaining  old 
person  whom  you  have  known.  And  the  oldest  per- 
sons you  have  known  and  listened  to — though  as  a 
rule  their  memories  have  kept  most  vividly  before 
them  a  state  of  life  which  faded  before  your  own 
memory  began, — are  after  all  people  who  partly  belong 
to  the  same  world  that  you  live  in ;  they  are  not  deni- 
zens of  one  historically  different.  To  my  mind,  the 


330   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

diary  of  Pepys  is  the  first  book  in  English  which  in- 
stantly produces  the  impression  of  proceeding,  for  all 
its  oddities,  from  an  older  form  of  just  the  same 
society  in  which  we  are  living — or  at  least  of  that  in 
which  our  grandfathers  lived.  A  few  familiar  names 
will  perhaps  make  my  meaning  clearer.  Defoe  was 
born  the  year  after  the  diary  was  begun;  the  novels 
which  he  made  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  eighteenth 
century  carry  the  impression  forward.  When  Defoe 
died,  Samuel  Johnson  was  already  of  age.  When 
Johnson  died,  Walter  Scott  was  a  boy  of  fourteen. 
Thackeray  might  have  known  Scott  well.  And  it  is 
hard  for  men  of  fifty  at  this  moment  to  realize  that 
Thackeray  has  even  yet  ceased  to  be  quite  contempo- 
rary. I  have  taken  the  names  at  random.  There  are 
numberless  others  which  might  have  served  our  pur- 
pose as  well ;  and  all  would  tell  the  same  story.  From 
the  time  of  Pepys  to  our  own  there  has  never  been 
a  radical  change  in  the  life  of  England  as  set  forth 
by  literature. 

When  Pepys  was  born,  on  the  other  hand,  Shakspere 
had  been  dead  less  than  twenty  years;  the  first  folio 
had  been  in  existence  less  than  ten,  and  Ben  Jonson 
was  still  the  living  laureate.  These  very  names,  taken 
almost  equally  at  random,  indicate  a  national  change, 
between  1632  and  1660,  greater  than  is  indicated  by  all 
the  two  centuries  of  the  others  put  together.  The  elder 
world,  during  the  last  days  of  which  Pepys  saw  the 
light,  was  to  the  end,  in  greater  or  less  degree,  spon- 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  331 

taneoiis,  enthusiastic,  versatile.  His  own  newer  world, 
which  has  lasted  almost  to  our  own  time,  was  none  of 
these.  When  I  seek  a  word  to  note  the  impression 
which  it  makes  on  me,  in  comparison,  I  can  find  none 
better  than  the  neither  very  definite  nor  very  happy 
word,  tenacious. 

Yet  the  characteristics  of  which  the  later  world  has 
been  tenacious  are  not  those  which  first  appeared  on  its 
surface.  Even  in  the  earliest  edition  of  Pepy's  Diary, 
— and  still  more  in  those  later  ones  which,  with  more 
regard  for  historical  precision  than  for  considerate 
discretion,  have  made  public  so  many  details  of  ex- 
tremely private  nature, — one  cannot  help  feeling,  year 
by  year,  the  swift  growth  about  the  man,  and  some- 
times in  his  own  character,  of  what  at  first  sight  would 
seem  an  utterly  decadent  corruption.  It  is  a  common- 
place that  the  fashion  of  England,  repressed  for  half  a 
generation  by  the  impracticable  austerities  of  Puritan- 
ism, reacted  into  an  open  licentiousness  not  quite 
paralleled  before  or  afterward ;  it  is  a  commonplace,  too, 
that  at  the  same  time  the  moral  saws  of  Puritan  domi- 
nance did  not  quite  die  out.  As  one  reads  Pepys,  these 
commonplaces  spring  into  a  life  so  vivid  that  one 
laughs  at  oneself  for  finding  that  here  they  seem — 
what  just  then  they  probably  were — something  like 
novelties.  Here,  in  its  heyday,  is  what  to  foreign  eyes 
has  ever  since  seemed  the  hypocrisy,  the  cant  of  modern 
England, — the  virtuous  phrasing,  the  far  from  virtuous 
conduct, — the  characteristic  which,   at  a  moment  of 


332   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

sad  international  tension,  Lowell  satirized,  across  seas, 
in  some  of  those  lines  from  the  "Biglow  Papers"  which, 
once  read,  stick  in  memory : 

Old  Uncle  S., 

Sez  he,  I  guess 

John  preaches  well,  sez  he; 

But  sermon  through. 

And  come  to  do. 

Why,  there's  the  old  J.  B. 

A-crowdin'  you  and  me. 

This  Pepys  went  to  church  and  listened  to  sermons  as 
smugly  and  as  honestly  as  any  Puritan  you  please;  he 
attended  to  his  business  admirably;  he  pried,  inno- 
cently and  without  innocence,  too,  into  the  affairs  of 
other  people;  he  was  insatiably  curious  about  all  man- 
ner of  things,  good  and  bad ;  and  he  misconducted  him- 
self with  little  more  sense  that  what  he  did  was  not 
a  matter  of  course  than  he  felt  in  publicly  presenting 
himself  at  divine  service.  To  feel  what  this  truly 
signifies  concerning  national  character  and  temper,  you 
must  glance  forward  at  the  English  literature  of  later 
times  than  those  with  which  we  are  directly  concerned 
— at  the  ''Spectator,"  at  "Tom  Jones,"  and  "Amelia," 
at  the  novels  of  Jane  Austen,  and  at  those  of  Thackeray. 
In  the  course  of  the  generations,  you  will  feel  at  last, 
the  divergence  between  preaching  and  practice,  which 
once  seemed  appalling  hypocrisy,  tended  to  pass  into 
a  phase  where  one  can  hardly  iiame  it  by  much  more 
serious  terms  than  sham  or  humbug.     In  which  fact, 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  333 

you  may  begin  to  perceive,  I  think,  how  to  this  day 
the  real  tenacity  of  England  has  been  a  tenacity  of  the 
one  sound  trait  which  revealed  itself  in  that  reckless 
time :  this  was  common-sense,  as  distinguished  from 
vague  and  untested  ideals,  however  admirable  they 
may  appear. 

But  we  stray  from  the  matters  immediately  before 
us.  Our  real  business  is  to  glance  at  the  new  literature 
which  came  so  quickly  into  being  after  the  Restoration. 
To  dwell  on  it  in  detail  is  not  now  in  our  power;  and 
on  the  whole  we  need  hardly  regret  the  fact.  Though 
beyond  question  this  literature  is  historically  important, 
a  glance  at  any  considerable  body  of  it  will  suffice  to 
show  that  it  has  little  positive  merit.  Toward  the  end 
of  Samuel  Johnson's  Hterary  life  was  made  that  copious 
collection  of  British  poets  which  his  admirably  charac- 
teristic introductory  biographies  have  kept  alive.  For 
years  the  fifty-odd  volumes  in  which  they  comprise 
the  works  of  poets  between  Cowley  and  Gray  have 
been  favorite  little  books  of  mine;  and  of  all  their 
characteristics  none  has  grown  more  salient  than  the 
number  of  writers  whom  Johnson's  publishers  thought 
worth  preserving  and  who  would  otherwise  be,  for 
general  readers,  hardly  so  much  as  names.  A  num- 
ber of  these  flourished  during  the  years  we  now 
have  in  mind.  In  general  they  may  be  held  repre- 
sentative of  the  lyric  poetry  which  increased  the  mass 
of  English  literature  between  1660  and  1700.  Only 
two  among  them  have  retained  any  importance.     Butler 


334   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

has  lasted  to  some  degree;  so,  in  far  higher  dignity, 
has  Dryden.  As  for  the  rest,  one  need  hardly  remem- 
ber them  apart  to-day.  One  need  remember  only 
that  in  their  own  time  they  were,  or  at  least  aspired 
to  be,  poets  of  fashion,  as  distinguished  from  anything 
more  serious ;  that  the  fashion  of  their  time  was  trivial 
and  corrupt ;  and  so  that  you  find  them  to  express  little 
else  than  triviality  or  corruption. 

As  I  write,  a  quatrain — from  Rochester,  I  think, — 
springs  to  memory : 

Should  some  brave  youth,  worth  being  drunk,  prove  nice, 
And  from  the  gay  encounter  faintly  shrink, 

'Twould  please  the  ghost  of  my  departed  vice 
If,  at  my  counsel,  he  repent  and  drink. 

It  rather  innocently  illustrates  what  I  have  in  mind 
concerning  this  fashionable  poetry.  It  shows,  too, 
how  the  same  fashion  demanded  a  certain  superficial 
amenity  of  manner — general  lucidity  of  phrase, 
smoothness  of  flow,  whatever  should  least  strain  the 
attentive  power  of  readers.  In  brief,  though  the  Eng- 
lish politeness  of  those  forty  years  was  far  from  lofty, 
the  whole  character  of  this  later  seventeenth  century 
poetry  is  rather  polite  than  fervid  or  spontaneous.  It 
tends  straight  toward  the  rigidly  polite  and  cool  con- 
ventions of  the  couplet,  which  dominated  all  the  Eng- 
lish poetry  of  the  century  then  to  ensue.  It  never  seems 
broadly  popular,  never  comprehensively  national  in 
the  sense  in  which  one  felt  so  the  elder  and  integral 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  335 

literature  of  Elizabethan  times.  But  neither  does  it 
seem  individual,  or  solitary,  as  the  disintegrant  poetry 
seemed  which  followed  toward  the  mid-century. 
Rather,  the  manner  in  which  the  individuality  of 
writers  is  absorbed  by  the  general  type  of  their  work 
suggests  something  analogous  to  the  integrity  of  the 
earlier  days.  This  new  literary  integrity,  however, 
is  not  one  of  all-embracing  national  character;  it  is 
rather  an  integrity  of  a  fashionable  class  apart. 

The  temper  of  this  fashionable  class  certainly  ani- 
mates the  most  popular  poem  of  the  early  Restoration, 
and  perhaps  the  one  work  which  could  have  proceeded 
from  no  other  period, — Butler's  "Hudibras."  Pepys, 
who  among  his  other  merits  was  a  frankly  independent 
critic  when  he  made  his  jottings  for  himself,  thought 
ill  of  it.  But  the  shrewdness  of  its  occasional  epigram 
and  the  imitable  facility  of  its  doggerel  and  of  its  as- 
tonishing rhymes  have  proved,  in  their  own  way,  per- 
manent. It  was  these,  no  doubt,  which  gave  it  instant 
popularity  with  all  that  sort  of  English  folk  who  wel- 
comed the  downfall  of  dominant  Puritanism ;  in  all  like- 
lihood, however,  they  welcomed  it  still  more  because  of 
its  obviously  extravagant  satire.  Satire,  hitherto  a 
rather  minor  form  of  English  poetry,  became  and  for 
a  good  while  remained  perhaps  the  most  important. 
English  satire  has  never  been  very  fine;  excellent 
satire,  indeed,  demands  such  national  tempers  as  have 
made  epigrammatic  the  idioms  of  Rome  and  of  Paris ; 
and  in  this  Hudibrastic  form  English  satire  was  more 


336   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

crude  than  it  was  later.  Of  its  sincerity,  too,  one  can- 
not feel  much  more  sure  than  one  may  generally  feel 
in  our  own  time  concerning  the  sincerity  of  journalism. 
Throughout  it,  however,  one  can  detect  a  trait  really 
characteristic  of  such  a  society  as  welcomed  and  en- 
couraged it.  Sincere  or  not,  satire  is  essentially  a  kind 
of  writing  which  pretends  to  unmask  pretence.  The 
burlesque  excesses  of  "Hudibras,"  of  course,  like  the 
more  formal  invectives  of  other  and  later  English 
satire,  are  preposterous.  All  the  same,  they  must  have 
seemed  in  their  day  refreshingly  veracious  as  compared 
with  canting  parodies  of  virtue  and  decency.  At  that 
moment  the  recoil  from  impracticable  Puritan  ideals 
was  extreme ;  and  assertion  of  any  ideals  had  come  for 
the  while  to  appear  deliberately  false. 

We  come  dangerously  near  what  is  far  from  my  real 
purpose — the  appearance  of  casuistical  defence.  The 
licentious  excesses  of  the  Restoration  were  abomi- 
nable ;  and  the  literature  which  recorded  them  remains 
so.  At  the  same  time,  these  excesses,  both  in  life  and 
in  letters,  are  facts;  and  they  are  facts  which  marked 
a  period  not  destined  to  be  one  of  lasting  national 
decline.  In  their  obvious  aspect,  as  commonplace  has 
it,  they  were  the  surging  reaction  of  the  baser  phrases 
of  human  nature  which  had  been  repressed,  for  too 
many  years,  by  the  futile  dominance  of  the  Puritans. 
There  is  another  aspect  of  them,  not  exactly  better, 
but  at  least  less  despicable,  in  which  we  may  regard 
them  rather  as  a  cynical,  but  not  for  that  reason  a  dis- 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  337 

honest,  expression  of  impatience  with  any  form  of 
morally  pretentious  untruth.  If  there  be  a  better  tem- 
per in  them  at  all,  if  there  be  any  sentiment  for  which 
we  may  still  feel  a  gleam  of  respect,  it  may  be  expressed 
something  like  this :  We  have  had  enough  of  canting 
idealists,  the  fashionable  temper  of  the  Restoration 
seems  to  say ;  and  we  have  experienced  the  oppressions 
and  the  anarchy  into  which  their  mendacious  vagaries 
plunged  us.  Let  us  face  facts  as  they  are — ugly,  riot- 
ous, perhaps  gay,  but  surely  wicked  and  abandoned. 
Facts  are  our  nearest  guides  to  truth,  after  all.  Make 
of  them  what  you  will ;  it  is  better  to  recognize  that 
whatever  is  is  right  than  to  pretend  any  longer  that 
the  only  right  things  are  things  which  never  can  exist 
in  such  a  Vv'orld  as  this  of  ours. 

It  is  only,  I  think,  when  we  take  some  such  view 
of  the  matter  as  this  that  we  can  understand  how,  in 
Queen  Anne's  time,  a  personage  at  once  so  typical  and 
so  worthy  as  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  could  emerge  from 
the  later  years  of  a  society  among  the  favorite  amuse- 
ments of  whose  youth  had  been  the  comedies  of  the 
Restoration.  Mummified  to-day  in  their  stained 
quartos  or  their  cracked  leather  bindings,  or  unwrapped 
in  all  the  ugly  nakedness  of  reprint,  they  are  repellent 
things.  There  are  traces  of  wit  in  them  still,  and 
of  ingenuity;  but  there  is  no  lingering  trace  of  the 
poetry — of  the  lyric  grace,  of  the  old  romantic  spirit 
and  beauty — which  lingered  even  in  the  plays  of 
Shirley.     And,  at  least  to  modern  readers,  they  are 


338   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

not  only  more  vile  things  than  you  can  find  elsewhere 
in  accepted  English  literature,  before  or  since ;  they  are 
also,  what  in  some  moods  seems  worse,  inexhaustibly 
tedious  in  their  long-drawn-out  monotony  of  effrontery. 
You  cannot  believe  them,  either,  a  bit  more  sincere, 
a  bit  more  truly  honest,  than  many  of  the  satires  seem 
which  form  so  characteristic  a  phase  of  the  lyric  poetry 
contemporary  with  them.  Yet,  for  all  this  you  can 
hardly  fail  to  detect  in  them  two  traits  at  once  charac- 
teristic of  their  time  and  not  unwholesome.  They 
profess  to  set  forth  plain  fact,  as  distinguished  from 
all  manner  of  moral  pretence;  and  this  they  attempt 
to  set  forth  in  a  style  which  approaches  the  language 
of  daily  life,  as  distinguished  from  the  vagaries  of  the 
elder  theatrical  rhetoric.  The  fashionable  public  to 
which  they  appealed  was  one  which  had  had  enough 
of  sham,  of  cant,  of  impracticable  and  misleading  ideals 
in  whatever  form.  What  it  demanded  and  welcomed 
was  something  which  should  seem,  for  the  moment, 
shrewdly  to  assert  a  state  of  things  approved  by 
common-sense. 

In  this  aspect,  and  I  think  in  no  other,  the  comedies 
of  the  Restoration  show  themselves  to  be  something 
more  than  records  of  a  passing  but  extreme  reaction 
from  the  excesses  of  Puritanism — something  more,  too, 
than  traces  of  the  real  decadence  which  had  overtaken 
courtly  fashion,  no  longer  to  be  politically  dominant 
in  England.  They  prove  also  to  contain  premonitory 
traces  of  that  prudent  and  tenacious  recognition  of  the 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  339 

value  of  facts,  as  distinguished  from  untested  ideals, 
which,  for  two  centuries  after  them,  was  to  be  so 
strong  a  feature  of  the  English  national  character. 

It  was  during  the  years,  we  have  seen,  when  this 
literature  of  the  Restoration  was  pursuing  its  mad 
career  that  Milton,  in  austere  solitude,  was  making  the 
great  poems  which  record  the  spirit  of  the  elder  Puri- 
tanism, During  the  same  years,  old  Izaak  Walton, 
who  had  been  born  so  long  ago  as  the  time  when 
Marlowe  was  killed,  was  writing  his  later  lives  of 
Anglican  worthies,  which  so  gently  record  the  sweeter 
temper  of  the  past.  And  during  these  same  years,  too, 
there  was  growing  to  its  ripeness  a  work  which,  a  little 
later,  gave  a  place  in  permanent  literature  to  the  spirit 
of  devout  dissent,  still  burning  beneath  the  fashionable 
surface  of  life.  One  is  sometimes  disposed  to  feel, 
indeed,  that — apart  from  the  great  poems  of  Milton — 
Bunyan's  "Pilgrim's  Progress"  is  the  one  English  work 
between  the  Restoration  and  the  eighteenth  century 
which  has  never  lost  its  hold  on  human  beings  and 
which  never  can  lose  it.  There  is  nothing  else  from 
those  days  which  one  would  not  spare  sooner. 

What  gives  it  this  diuturnity,  to  be  sure,  is  hardly  its 
substance,  but  rather  the  vividness  of  its  narrative,  the 
rugged  force  and  humor  of  its  characterization,  and 
the  wonderful  felicity  with  which,  in  a  dialect  of  its 
own,  it  adapts  the  English  of  the  Bible  to  its  homely 
service.  These  merits,  all  the  while,  are  such  as  Bun- 
yan  would  not  much  have  valued.     They  are  not  of 


340   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

the  essence  of  his  purpose ;  they  are  rather  the  accidental 
vanities  which,  in  setting  that  purpose  forth,  he  could 
in  nowise  avoid.  A  few  years  ago,  in  an  elaborately 
classified  American  library,  I  chanced  to  look  for  the 
"Pilgrim's  Progress"  on  the  shelves  appropriated  to 
English  literature.  Finding  no  trace  of  it  there,  I  was 
driven  to  search  for  it  in  the  catalogue,  where  it 
presently  appeared  duly  recorded  under  the  heading 
of  Dogmatic  Theology.  After  the  combined  amuse- 
ment and  vexation  which  accompanied  this  discovery, 
I  found  myself  rather  disposed  to  think  the  classifica- 
tion defensible.  Though  far  from  indicating  the 
whole  character  of  the  book,  it  comes  fairly  near  indi- 
cating the  actual  intention  of  it.  The  allegory,  the 
parable,  was  meant  not  to  entertain,  but  actually  to 
teach  immortal  truth; — to  teach  it,  no  doubt,  in  an- 
other guise  than  that  assumed  by  creeds,  but  not  in 
much  other  spirit. 

And  the  truth  which  Bunyan  thus  sought  to  teach 
is  the  same  truth  which  in  a  widely  different  way  had 
inspired  Milton  to  make  his  great  poems;  it  is  the 
same  truth,  too,  which,  during  those  very  years,  New 
England  was  attempting  to  embody  not  in  literature, 
but  in  the  structure  of  a  society  willing  to  accept  its 
domination — the  truth  as  the  Puritans  conceived  it.  In 
tliose  days  English  Puritanism  had  passed  beyond  the 
stage  where  Puritanism  still  lingered  in  New  England. 
In  the  mother  country  all  hope  that  the  Puritans  might 
politically  dominate  had  faded;  and,  as  you  ponder  on 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  341 

your  memory  of  the  "Pilgrim's  Progress,"  you  can  feel 
this  fact  implicitly  set  forth  there.  The  seeker  for 
salvation  no  longer  attempts  to  mould  the  world  about 
him  into  another  form  than  that  which  divine  justice, 
or  fate,  or  whatever  you  will,  has  imposed  upon  it. 
What  he  does  attempt,  wherever  he  finds  himself,  is 
only  to  tread  for  himself  the  true  path.  If  thereby 
he  can  avoid  destruction,  he  can  show  by  example  what 
other  men  should  do.  There  was  never  a  world  so 
evil  that  good  lives  could  not  be  lived  in  it.  If  godly 
men  cannot  dominate  the  vanities,  they  may  at  least 
persevere ;  and,  after  all,  the  most  that  the  best  of  them 
may  wisely  hope  for  is  that  perseverance  should  spring 
up  all  about  them.  The  more  of  us  who  seek  salvation, 
the  more  may  find  it;  and  the  highest  ideal  of  all  is 
that  more  and  more  shall  seek  it  and  shall  find.  Let 
each  of  us  seek,  then,  if  he  will;  humbly  admitting  that 
the  dream  of  earthly  dominance,  so  hopelessly  disap- 
pointed a  little  while  ago,  was  only  another  earthly 
vanity.  Pagan,  Pope,  or  Presbyter,  it  is  all  one;  but 
the  straight  and  narrow  path  still  stretches  before  all 
who  are  willing  devoutly  to  tread  it, 

Bunyan,  very  likely,  would  have  been  far  from 
assent  to  such  statement  as  this  of  his  purpose, — a 
statement  rather  of  the  mood  which  results  from  read- 
ing his  wonderful  allegory  than  of  any  precise  teach- 
ing you  may  find  set  down  or  intentionally  implied 
in  its  pages.  Yet  this  mood  seems  to  me  both  one 
which  naturally  results  from  the  reading  and  one  which 


342   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

goes  far  to  place  the  pages  in  their  historical  setting. 
They  were  written  in  the  world  of  which  Pepys  had 
so  vividly  recorded  the  first  years;  in  the  world  from 
which  Milton  sadly  sat  apart,  turning  the  inner  eyes  of 
his  grave  imagination  back  toward  the  fallen  hopes  of 
other  days;  in  the  world  which  had  echoed  with 
laughter  over  the  lines  of  "Hudibras,"  and  had  wel- 
comed with  the  noisy  gaiety  of  its  licentious  fashion 
all  the  enormities  of  Restoration  comedy.  In  every 
superficial  or  dominant  aspect,  it  seemed  a  world  more 
utterly  fallen  from  spiritual  grace  than  any  which  had 
come  before.  Yet,  even  in  its  ribaldries,  as  we  saw  a 
little  while  ago,  we  may  discern,  without  attempting 
casuistically  to  defend  them,  something  like  a  whole- 
some trait.  At  least,  these  roisterers,  in  their  crude 
and  coarse  cynicism  of  spirit,  disdained  the  falsehood 
of  denying  falsehood,  the  vice  of  cloaking  vice.  They 
had  had  enough  of  pretence  that  human  nature  and 
human  life  could  be  better  things  and  graver  than  they 
knew  them.  They  would  rather  face  fact  than  disguise 
it, — face  it  carelessly,  recklessly,  contemptuously  and 
contemptibly  at  once.  At  least  they  would  not  mouth 
loftily  empty  ideals,  to  which  fact  everywhere  gave 
the  lie. 

Yet  all  the  while  ideals  persisted,  strong  and  uncon- 
querable as  ever.  The  difiference,  when  you  compare 
the  Restoration  with  the  generation  before,  seems  to  be 
that  ideals  no  longer  yielded  to  the  vanity  of  dreaming 
that  they  could   materially  conquer.      Conquest   and 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  343 

earthly  power  belong-  to  sovereignty,  and  we  are  bidden 
render  unto  Caesar  the  things  which  are  Caesar's.  We 
are  not  forbidden,  at  the  same  time,  to  provide  our- 
selves with  practical  constitutional  safeguards.  Caesar 
may  not  trespass  on  our  rights;  but  neither  may  we 
trespass  on  Caesar's.  So  long  as  he  does  not  trespass, 
then,  leave  the  world  to  him ;  and  leave  his  responsibil- 
ity to  powers  beyond  the  world.  Let  the  world  be  evil 
as  it  may,  let  is  rush  headlong  as  it  will  to  destruction. 
At  worst  we  have,  among  our  rights,  the  right  to  rec- 
ognize, each  for  himself,  ideal  truth,  and  the  right  to 
strive  for  it  each  as  best  he  may  without  trespass.  No 
matter  how  base  facts  may  be,  ideals,  so  long  as  they  be 
kept  purely  ideal,  are  facts,  too;  and  facts  all  the  more 
potent  for  their  very  disdain  of  material  power.  The 
centuries  will  show  whether  the  true  and  lasting  facts 
are  those  vile  earthly  ones  which  the  shameless  satirists 
and  dramatists  are  setting  forth  in  their  nakedness,  or 
those  which  nothing  shall  prevent  earnest  men  from 
peacefully  proclaiming  in  all  their  ethereality. 

In  some  such  mood  as  this,  it  seems  to  me,  we  may 
see  the  historical  meaning  not  only  of  the  allegory  in 
which  Bunyan  enshrined  the  spirit  of  devout  dissent, 
but  the  meaning  as  well  of  the  sermons  in  which,  dur- 
ing those  years  and  during  years  then  to  come,  good 
men  persistently  preached  righteousness  from  the  pul- 
pits of  the  Established  Church.  No  one  could  long 
pretend  that  King  Charles  II.  was  in  any  sense  an 
edifying  Defender  of  the  Faith ;  and,  for  all  the  various 


344   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

merits  of  his  royal  successors,  few  of  these  titular 
heads  of  the  National  Church  have  shown  themselves 
precisely  saintly.  There  have  been  periods  meanwhile 
when  spiritual  grace  has  not  been  the  most  conspicuous 
feature  of  the  Anglican  clergy.  But  there  has  never 
been  a  moment  when  the  Church,  in  the  earnest  belief 
of  its  earnest  members,  has  not  still  been  held  histori- 
cally the  Church;  nor  yet  a  moment  when  an  honest 
and  earnest  minister  of  that  Church  could  not  sincerely 
set  forth,  amid  all  the  earthly  sins  and  wickedness  that 
may  have  surrounded  him,  the  ideals  of  faith  and  of 
conduct  which,  however  men  or  clergymen  may  have 
strayed  from  them,  the  Church  has  kept  steadfastly 
in  its  custody.  The  Church,  from  the  beginning  of 
the  Restoration,  possessed  the  vitality  which  it  has 
preserved ;  so  did  dissent.  The  earnestness  of  England 
has  never  really  failed;  and  it  has  persisted,  I  am 
tempted  to  think,  the  more  surely  because  it  has  never 
again  tried  to  deny  fact,  and  to  make  spiritual  ideals 
materially  dominant. 

Vague  and  elusive  as  we  may  perhaps  find  the  course 
of  thought  we  are  now  attempting  to  follow  together, 
we  have  come  fairly  near  to  generalizing  several  facts, 
at  first  sight  distinct.  First  and  greatest  we  touched 
on  the  isolated  poems  of  Milton,  revealing  how  grandly 
the  spirit  of  the  mid-century  lingered  for  a  while  amid 
the  baseness  of  the  newer  times.  Our  subsequent  busi- 
ness has  been  with  the  literature  peculiar  to  that  new 
epoch.    We  glanced  at  the  wonderfully  unreserved  rec- 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  345 

ords  of  every-day  reality  which  have  been  deciphered 
from  the  private  manuscripts  of  Pepys ;  we  glanced  at 
"Hudibras;"  we  glanced  at  the  fashionable  poets,  and 
at  the  writers  of  comedy,  and  finally  we  glanced  at  the 
"Pilgrim's  progress."  Taken  together,  these  principal 
phases  of  Restoration  literature  do  reveal,  it  seems 
to  me,  a  common  trait, — a  trait  which  at  once  dis- 
tinguishes them  from  all  the  literature  of  the  earlier 
seventeenth  century,  and  marks  them  as  precursors  of 
all  the  English  literature  for  the  century  to  come. 
And  this  trait  I  may  call,  perhaps,  by  no  more  solemn 
name  than  common-sense, — an  impulse,  more  mature 
than  that  of  elder  times,  to  recognize  and  to  respect 
plain  fact,  and  to  hold  that  ideals  are  things  essentially 
apart,  not  to  be  ignored  or  neglected,  but  not  to  be 
confused  with  the  inevitable  circumstance  of  material 
existence. 

There  are  one  or  two  other  aspects  of  English 
thought  in  these  same  years  which  may  help  us  define 
this  impression.  Though  not  precisely  within  our 
range  as  students  of  literature,  they  may  consequently 
deserve  an  instant  of  attention.  When,  a  good  while 
ago,  we  touched  together  on  the  works  of  Bacon,  we 
dwelt  a  little  on  the  fact  that  Elizabethan  science  was 
not  in  a  state  which  could  possibly  warrant  the  magnifi- 
cently comprehensive  generalizations  he  attempted.  In 
1660, — the  year  when  Pepys  began  his  diary,  the  year 
when  Charles  II.  was  welcomed  back  to  his  throne  by 
such  poets  of  the  elder  time  as  Davenant  and  Cowley, 


346   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

and  by  such  poets  of  the  newer  days  as  Waller  and 
Dryden, — there  was  laid  what  we  may  call  the  founda- 
tion-stone of  the  impregnable  English  science  to  come ; 
in  plainer  words,  the  Royal  Society  was  founded. 
Before  the  seventeenth  century  ended,  the  records  of 
English  science  and  philosophy  already  included,  to 
go  no  further,  the  work  of  Boyle,  of  Newton,  and  of 
Locke.  To  dwell  on  this  in  detail  is  beyond  our 
province.  But  the  chief  fact  which  these  names  imply 
seems  surely,  in  another  guise,  the  same  fact  which  we 
have  begun  to  discern  elsewhere.  The  national  temper 
of  England  was  at  last  in  a  state  where  its  most  serious 
purpose  was  to  ascertain  indisputable  truth,  to  plant 
its  feet  on  solid  ground.  So  when,  disdaining  tempta- 
tion to  the  vagaries  of  untested  generalization,  English 
men  of  science  vigorously  devoted  themselves  to  ob- 
servation and  experiment,  they  positively  and  perma- 
nently enriched  human  knowledge.  In  science  the  age 
was  far  more  memorable  than  in  literature;  just  as  the 
age  before  had  been  far  more  memorable  in  literature 
than  in  science.  This  does  not  mean  that  imagination 
or  fervor  flagged;  it  means  rather  that,  in  obedience 
to  the  true  spirit  of  their  time,  imagination  and  fervor 
were  growing  content  to  exert  themselves  within  the 
limits  of  certainty. 

Again,  though  the  fact  belongs  to  the  later  years 
of  the  forty  over  which  we  are  now  hurrying  together, 
the  Bank  of  England  was  founded  before  the  century 
ended.     It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  between  the 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  347 

Restoration  and  the  death  of  John  Dryden,  both  the 
science  and  the  finance  of  modern  England  came  finally 
into  existence.  And  Dryden,  whose  career  extended 
throughout  this  period  when  England  was  at  last  prov- 
ing itself  modern,  was  the  first  eminent  man  of  English 
letters  whose  work  throughout  seems  a  modern  thing — 
something  which  belongs  rather  to  our  own  time  than 
to  times  gone  before. 

When  I  planned  these  lectures,  accordingly,  in  the 
better  proportions  from  which  I  have  been  forced  to 
depart,  I  meant  to  give  the  last  one  wholly  to  him; 
for  it  seemed  to  me  that  a  consideration  of  his  writings 
would  define  and  summarize,  better  than  anything  else, 
our  impression  of  the  later  seventeenth  century.  He 
was  about  a  year  older  than  Pepys;  so,  like  Pepys,  he 
could  remember  the  Civil  Wars,  and  he  grew  up  dur- 
ing the  Commonwealth  and  the  Protectorate.  He  pub- 
lished "Heroic  Stanzas  on  the  Death  of  Cromwell ;" 
and  a  year  later  he  published  an  ode  of  welcome  to  the 
restored  King  Charles  H.  He  was  among  the  earliest 
and  most  acceptable  writers  of  Restoration  comedy. 
His  dramas  and  tragedies  in  heroic  rhyme  are  the  most 
copious  and  respectable  examples  of  the  passing  fashion 
which  attempted  to  replace  the  dead  conventions  of 
Elizabethan  tragedy  by  something  more  like  the  splen- 
did artificialities  of  classical  tragedy  in  France.  As  a 
satirist  he  was  at  once  the  most  robust  and  incisive  of 
his  day,  and  as  little  hampered  by  conscience  as  the 
weakest.    At  one  time  he  was  a  member  of  the  Church 


548   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

of  England,  at  another  a  Roman  Catholic.  His  occa- 
sional verses — the  only  one  which  has  surely  survived  is 
the  ode  to  music,  commonly  called  "Alexander's  Feast" 
— show  him,  to  the  very  end,  a  master  of  lyric  method. 
His  occasional  prose,  mostly  in  the  form  of  copious 
prefaces  and  dedications,  shows  him  at  once  a  man  of 
wide  though  careless  reading  in  all  ranges  of  literature 
— ancient  and  modern — and,  whatever  one  may  think 
of  his  opinions  in  detail,  a  vigorously  sensible  critic. 
Not  only  his  satires,  but  his  many  translations  and 
adaptations  into  contemporary  terms  of  matters  from 
foreign  literatures  and  from  the  older  English,  went 
further  than  any  other  work  of  their  time  toward  im- 
posing on  English  verse  the  yoke  of  the  couplet  which 
it  bore  through  a  full  century  to  come.  His  prose  style 
has  at  last,  in  robustly  pristine  form,  the  cool  lucidity 
and  balance  which,  swiftly  becoming  more  and  more 
conventional,  marked  subsequent  English  style  for  more 
than  a  hundred  years.  Beginning  with  no  particular 
eminence  or  advantages,  he  had  made  himself,  long 
before  the  end,  more  dominant  in  English  letters  than 
any  man  had  been  before  him,  except  Ben  Jonson,  or 
than  any  later  man  became  except  that  other  Johnson, 
who  so  strongly  imposed  his  personality  on  literature 
during  the  later  eighteenth  century.  And,  in  a  way, 
one  feels  that  the  dominance  of  Dryden  was  perhaps 
the  least  disputed  of  the  three. 

Throughout,  whether  in  his  more  careless  moments 
or  in  his  more  earnest,  his  work  seems  that  of  a  man 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  349 

whose  unquestionable  power  never  so  carried  him  away 
as  to  bewilder  his  shrewd  recognition  of  contemporary- 
fact,  his  fundamentally  cool  common-sense.  He  almost 
always  wrote  and  often  seems  intentionally  to  have 
thought,  in  the  fashion  of  the  moment,  leading  it  when 
he  could,  following  it  when  he  must.  He  was  a 
Trimmer,  more  than  once,  if  you  like;  but  not  for  that 
reason  contemptible,  as  trimmers  seem  at  certain  other 
times  in  history.  Rather,  the  trimmers  of  his  time 
seem,  whether  they  quite  knew  it  or  not,  people  who 
were  content  to  recognize  fact  which  they  could  not 
control.  The  power  which  diverts  historic  force,  they 
seem  to  have  felt,  knows  better  than  any  prating  the- 
orist in  what  direction  historic  force  must  move.  It  is 
wisest  to  admit  this,  once  for  all ;  to  cheer  on  the  win- 
ners and  to  let  the  devil  take  the  hindmost.  Such  con- 
duct, no  doubt,  is  far  from  the  ideal  tenacity  of 
uncompromising  and  irreconcilable  devotees ;  you  can 
never  instinctively  love  it  in  such  manner  as  that  in 
which,  when  causes  are  finally  and  safely  lost,  you 
romantically  love  the  passionate  adherence  of  those 
who  sacrificed  themselves — the  Jacobites,  for  example, 
or  the  Tories  of  the  American  Revolution.  But  the 
Trimmers  of  certain  epochs  have  a  tenacity  of  their 
own, — a  tenacity  not  of  ideals,  which  they  deem  follies, 
but  of  cool  common-sense.  And  common-sense,  though 
never  stirring  or  at  first  flush  inspiring,  is  in  many 
aspects  admirable. 

Once  more  we  may  seem  to  be  losing  ourselves  in 


350   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

some  labyrinth  of  casuistry.  Nothing  could  be  further 
from  my  purpose.  Far  as  we  have  strayed  from  the 
landmarks  of  precise  historic  facts,  we  have  always 
been  students  of  literary  history.  Our  chief  business 
together  has  not  been  critical,  still  less  polemic;  it 
has  really  been  historical,  but  historical  in  a  way 
which  must  often  have  seemed  bafflingly  indefinite. 
We  have  been  attempting  to  trace  the  course  of  that 
vague  yet  undeniable  thing,  the  temper  of  a  nation, 
during  a  century  when  it  underwent  a  marked  and 
lasting  change.  In  our  effort  to  perceive  and  to  under- 
stand this  change,  we  have  tried,  again  and  again,  to  put 
ourselves  for  the  moment  into  sympathy  with  one  aspect 
of  it  or  another;  and  except  sympathetically,  I  have 
tried  throughout  neither  to  praise  nor  to  blame, but  only 
to  set  forth  what  seems  to  me  to  have  been  the  truth. 
So,  in  that  hasty  summary  of  Dryden's  work,  what 
I  had  chiefly  in  mind  was  no  wish  to  condemn  him 
or  to  defend  him.  It  was  only  to  present  him  in  an 
aspect  which  should  show,  as  clearly  as  possible,  the 
manner  in  which  his  career  exemplifies  how  the  later, 
reintegrating  literature  of  the  seventeenth  century  came 
to  lack  the  three  characteristics  which  had  marked  the 
integral  English  literature  of  Elizabethan  times.  That 
earlier  literature,  we  have  often  reminded  ourselves, 
was  spontaneous,  enthusiastic,  and  versatile.  Dryden 
never  seems  unthinkingly  spontaneous;  he  is  rather 
stoutly  deliberate.  He  never  seems  enthusiastic;  for 
all  the  boldness  of  his  manner,  he  rather  seems  coolly 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  351 

sensible.  And  although  his  work  is  far  from  monoto- 
nous, you  can  hardly  feel  him  to  have  been  precisely 
versatile;  instead,  the  increasing  assertiveness  of  his 
couplets  and  the  growingly  definite  rhythm  of  his 
prose,  at  once  vernacular  and  formally  literary,  indi- 
cate more  and  more  adherence  to  soundly  sensible 
convention.  And  as  to  the  substance  of  his  work,  it 
seems  serious  only  when  we  regard  it  as  unmixed 
literature.  Dryden  was  burdened  with  no  deep  sense 
of  mission  or  of  message.  His  dramas,  tragedies 
and  comedies  alike,  are  not  poems,  they  are  only  stage- 
plays,  made  for  such  audiences  as  the  notes  of  Pepys 
give  us  a  glimpse  of  before  the  curtain.  His  satires 
are  full  of  historical  interest ;  but  they  are  hardly  more 
profound  or  sincere  than  the  diatribes  of  partisan 
journalism  during  the  nineteenth  century.  His  trans- 
lations and  adaptations  are  only  restatements,  in  vigor- 
ously fluent  vernacular  terms,  of  matters  which  in  their 
earlier  forms  were  apt  to  have  the  grace  of  a  far  less 
sophisticated  simplicity.  His  prose,  which  seems  on 
the  whole  the  best  and  most  earnest  of  his  work,  is 
chiefly  an  admirably  clear  and  spirited  setting  forth 
of  increasingly  cultivated  good  sense  concerning  lit- 
erary matters.  The  thing  you  grow  to  like  about  him 
best  is  that  with  the  years  he  ripened  and  sweetened. 

The  folio  volume  of  "Fables,"  which  he  carelessly 
flung  together  in  the  last  months  of  his  life,  to  meet 
some  technical  contract  with  the  publisher  Tonson, 
is  a  pleasant  book  to  take,  now  and  again,  from  your 


352   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

shelves.  It  is  not  only  Dryden's  last  work;  it  is  the  final 
work  as  well  of  those  forty  years  of  English  history 
whose  beginning  is  so  vividly  recorded  by  Pepys.  And 
as  you  turn  the  pages,  whether  of  the  preface  which 
has  lingered  among  the  masterpieces  of  English  criti- 
cism, or  of  the  various  poems  which  follow  it,  you  can 
feel,  for  all  the  big  carelessness  of  the  compilation,  that 
here,  stronger  and  better  than  you  would  have  dared 
dream,  are  all  the  virtues,  all  the  merits  which  you 
could  detect  in  the  literature  of  the  Restoration,  with 
hardly  any  trace  left  of  the  baseness  and  the  vileness 
which  at  first  seemed  bound  to  overwhelm  them.  Even 
amid  the  excesses  we  could  perceive  something  like 
disdain  for  prating  mendacity;  it  is  better,  the  worst 
of  these  profligates  seems  to  have  thought,  that  we 
should  admit  and  proclaim  the  full  abomination  of 
fact,  than  that  we  should  cantingly  preach  ideals  which 
give  fact  the  lie.  And  in  this  mood  we  can  detect  the 
germ  of  one  which  in  its  maturity  was  to  assume  a 
form  very  different  from  the  reckless  and  profligate 
cynicism  of  its  first  flush.  For  good  sense,  grown 
to  the  point  of  rationally  recognizing  the  things 
which  are  admirable,  and  of  quietly  clinging  to  them 
as  demonstrable  certainties,  may  be  no  very  edifying 
phase  of  human  nature.  At  least,  however,  it  is  a 
sweet,  and  a  sound,  and  a  strong,  and  a  safe  one.  And 
that  is  what  one  feels  in  the  utterances  of  Dryden's 
later  years.  And  that,  I  think,  has  been  the  underlying 
strength  of  England  from  Dryden's  time  to  our  own. 


THE    AGE    OF    DRYDEN  353 

It  would  have  been  pleasant  to  dwell  on  this,  as  I 
meant  to  do  at  first.  But  our  time  grows  very  short. 
We  can  linger  over  Dryden  no  longer;  and  we  can 
hardly  glance  at  the  one  other  aspect  of  his  time  on 
which  I  should  most  have  liked  to  dwell  also.  By  the 
terms  of  the  foundation  which  has  brought  us  together, 
we  were  compelled  to  devote  ourselves  to  the  consider- 
ation of  some  period  in  the  literature  of  England.  As 
I  told  you  at  the  beginning,  I  chose  the  seventeenth 
century  for  two  reasons.  The  first  was  that  this 
century — the  century  of  Shakspere,  and  of  Milton,  and 
of  Dryden ;  the  century  which  began  with  full  Eliza- 
bethan integrity,  which  passed  through  the  disintegra- 
tion typified  by  dominant  Puritanism,  and  which  ended 
with  a  reintegration  hardly  yet  crumbling — marks  the 
greatest  change  in  national  temper  which  has  yet  de- 
clared itself  in  the  history  of  England.  The  second 
reason  came  nearer  to  my  heart ;  this  same  seventeenth 
century  was  that  in  which  America  parted  from  the 
mother  country.  So  throughout  I  have  tried  to  keep 
in  view  the  fact,  which  seems  to  me,  as  an  American, 
most  significant  of  all, — the  fact  that,  while  England 
was  undergoing  her  transformation  into  modernity, 
there  was  no  similar  change  across  the  seas,  where  the 
elder  temper  had  lingered  on  almost  till  the  present  day. 

If  time  had  served,  I  should  have  tried  to  illus- 
trate this  by  comparing  with  the  later  writings  of 
Dryden  the  one  work  of  seventeenth  century  Amer- 
ica which  has  any  claim  to  permanence  in   English 


354   THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

literature,  the  "Magnalia"  of  Cotton  Mather.  Flung 
together  almost  as  carelessly  as  Dryden's  "Fables," 
and  almost  at  the  same  time,  this  prose  epic  of 
emigrant  Puritanism  is  as  characteristic  of  King 
William's  New  England  as  Dryden's  work  is  of  the 
England  where  King  William  reigned  in  the  flesh. 
And  even  now  I  cannot  resist  the  impulse,  as  we  hasten 
toward  our  farewell,  of  putting  before  you  a  single 
phrase,  in  which,  during  the  years  when  Dryden's 
power  was  at  its  sweetest  and  ripest.  Cotton  Mather 
characterized  the  first  minister  of  our  New  England 
Cambridge.  Thomas  Shepard  was  his  name,  an  Em- 
manuel man,  who  put  his  name  on  the  college  books  the 
year  before  the  Pilgrims  landed  at  Yankee  Plymouth. 
And  he  made  his  way  to  America  in  time,  and  there 
died  at  last,  full  of  years  and  of  honors.  And  the 
sentence  in  which  Cotton  Mather  keeps  his  memory 
alive  is  this — "In  fine,  the  character  of  his  daily  con- 
versation was  a  trembling  walk  with  God." 

Those  words  are  almost  literally  contemporary,  I 
believe,  with  "Alexander's  Feast" ;  but  they  belong, 
in  spirit,  to  the  days  before  the  dominance  of  English 
Puritanism  was  broken.  Compare  them  with  any 
stanza  of  Dryden's  chief  ode.  The  contrast  tells  the 
story  of  the  parting  of  your  country  and  of  mine,  two 
hundred  years  ago,  and  more. 

From  that  day  to  this  neither  has  quite  understood 
the  other.  To  such  of  us  as  love  the  inestimable  tradi- 
tions we  must  always  cherish  in  common,  there  can 


THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  355 

consequently  come  no  more  eager  pleasure  than  that 
which  arises  from  any  effort  to  help  our  countries  tow- 
ard some  better  understanding  in  future.  When  I  met 
you  first,  I  tried  to  express  in  anticipation  a  pleasure  of 
which  the  reality  has  proved  even  more  deep  than  I 
should  have  dared  expect.  Your  Cambridge  has  re- 
ceived me  with  a  kindness  so  constant  and  so  confi- 
dent that  I  have  long  ago  ceased  to  feel  myself  here 
away  from  home.  Quite  what  this  means,  perhaps, 
none  but  an  American  can  wholly  understand.  It 
means  a  welcome  not  only  to  your  pleasant  life  of 
this  century  through  which  we  are  living  together, 
but  also  to  some  personal  share  in  those  wonderful 
memories  and  traditions  which  will  always  make 
this  English  Cambridge  a  goal  of  pilgrimage  for 
my  countrymen.  It  means,  for  me,  a  new,  wonder- 
ful, lasting  sense  of  human  fellowship  with  your 
worthies — on  so  many  of  whom  we  have  hastily 
touched  together.  It  means  a  debt  which  nothing  can 
repay, — which  I  can  only  try  thus  simply  to  acknowl- 
edge. The  best  I  can  hope  is  that  in  time  to  come 
you  may  remember,  as  gently  as  you  have  welcomed, 
my  effort  to  tell  how  that  subtle,  certain  thing — the 
national  temper  of  England,  at  a  critical  period  in 
its  history — presents  itself  to  a  mind  moulded  under 
influences  purely  American.  If  the  memory  lingers, 
even  with  a  few,  I  shall  have  done  the  little  in  my  power 
to  strengthen  the  forces  which  now,  so  happily,  are 
drawing  our  countries  once  more  together. 


INDEX 


Bacon,  Francis  (1561-1626),  175, 

183 
Bank  of  England,  346 
Baxter,  Richard  (1615-1691),  203, 

265 
Beaumont,    Francis    (1584-1616), 

and  Fletcher,  John  (1579-1625), 

77-84 
Bible,  169-175,  216 
Browne,  Sir  Thomas  (1605-1682), 

198-202 
Browne,    William,    of    Tavistock 

(1591-1643?),  129,  134,  149 
Bunyan,  John    (1628-1688),  339- 

343 
Burton,  Robert  (1577-1640),  192- 

197 
Butler,  Samuel  (1612-1680),  323, 

335-337 


Calvinism,  217-224 

Campion,  Thomas  (d.  1619),  102, 

146 
Carew,    Thomas    (i598?-i639?), 

137-139,  153 
Cavaliers,  or  Royalists,  248-250 
Chapman,   George   (i559?-i634), 

58-62 


Character-writing,  166-168 
Cowley,     Abraham     (161 8-1 667), 

145.  345 
Crashaw,    Richard    (1613-1649), 
142,  264 

D 

Daniel,  Samuel  (1562-1619),  104 
Davenant,    Sir    William     (1606- 

1668),  145,  345 
Davies,  Sir  John  (1569-1626),  106 
Dekker,   Thomas   (i57o?-i64i  ?), 

69-71.  75 
Denham,    Sir   John   (1615-1669), 

146 
Donne,  John  (1573-1 631),  119-127, 

164 
Drama,  Elizabethan,  29-44;  later, 

46-100 
Drayton,  Michael  (i563-i63i),io4 
Drummond,  William,  of  Hawthorn- 
den   (1585-1649),   62,   66,    110, 

111,  119 
Dryden,  John  (1631-1700),   7,  8, 

146, 346-353 

E 

Euphuism,  see  Lily 
Evolution  of  literature,  30,  47-50, 
57,  85,  94,  128,  145 


357 


358 


INDEX 


Falkland,     Lucius     Cary,     Lord 

(i6io?-i643),  136 
Fletcher,  Giles  (i588?-i623),  129- 

134 
Fletcher,  John,  see  Beaumont 
Fletcher,     Phineas     (1582-1650), 

i33>  134 
Ford,  John  (fl.  1639),  93-95,  137 
Foxe,    John    (1516-1587),    14-16, 

214 
Fuller,  Thomas  (1608-1661),  166, 

167,  202 


G 


Gardiner,    Samuel   Rawson,    176, 

210 
Gosse,  Edmund,  146 
Gosson,  Stephen  (1554-1624),  20, 

98 
Greene,  Robert  (i56o?-i592),  34- 

37 
Greville,     Fulke,     Lord     Brooke 
(1554-1628),  122 


H 


Habington,  William  (1605-1654), 

136,  140 
Hall,    Joseph    (1574-1656),     106, 

166,  167 
Harvey,  William  (1578-1657),  202 
Herbert    of    Cherbury,     Edward, 

Lord  (1583-1648),  119,  122,  264 
Herbert,  George  (1593-1633),  142, 

166,  167,  264 
Herrick,  Robert  (1591-1674),  146- 

153 


Heywood,  Thomas  (d.  1650?),  69, 

71-73 
Hobbes,  Thomas  (1588-1679),  203 
Hooker,     Richard     (1554?-!  600), 

14,  160 
Hutchinson,     John     (1615-1654), 


Jonson,    Ben.    (i573?-i637),    50, 
62-68,  90,  1 10-120,  147,  163 


K 


Kyd,  Thomas  (i557?-i595  ?).  34, 
35.  37.  90.  93 


Learning,  English,  192,  197,  198, 

271,346 
Lee,  Sidney,  34,  40,  55 
Lily,   John   (i554?-i6o6),  16-20, 

32.  34-36,  161,  177 
Literature,  defined,  2,  155 
Literature  in  America,  7 
Little  Gidding,  16,  264 
Locke,  John  (i  632-1 704),  346 
Lovelace,     Richard    (1618-1658), 

140 
Lyrics,  Elizabethan,  13,  44;  later, 

47,  101-154 

M 

Marlowe,  Christopher(i564-i593), 
33-37,  50.  52,  61,  84,  91,  93 

Marston,  John  (1575  ?-i634),  57, 
75.  93,  106 


INDEX 


359 


Masques,  282-285 

Massinger,  Philip  (i 583-1 640),  93, 

96,  210 
Mather,  Cotton  (1663-1728),  354 
Mather,  Increase  (1639-1723),  253 
Middleton,  Thomas  (1570?-! 62 7), 

67.  75-77.  87.  96 
Milton,   John   (1608-1674),    7,   8, 
134. 145.  153.  267-327 

N 

Napier,  John  (1550-1617),  202 
National  Temper,  in  general,  4; 
divergence  of,  8;  Elizabethan, 
43-45,  156;  disintegrating,  loi, 
153,  159,  262;  reintegrating,  346 
New  England,  174,  212,  217,  221, 
227,  234-236,  238,  259,  261,  293, 

354 
Newton,    Sir   Isaac    (1642-172  7), 

346 


Pamphlets,  controversial,  263,  304 
Pastoral  poetry,  288-293,  299-301 
Peele,  George  (i558?-i597?),  34, 

35.37 
Pepys,  Samuel  (1633-1703),  323, 

328-333 
Plan  of  this  book,  9 
Prose,   Elizabethan,    14-16;  later, 

155-206 
Pr)'nne,  William  (1600-1669),  98, 

240,  284 
Puritanism,  16,  17,  109,  207-266 


Quarles,  Francis  (1592-1644),  265 


R 

Ralegh,  Sir  Walter  (i552?-i6i8), 

26,  III,  184-192,  215 
Restoration,  comedy  of,  82,   323, 

337-339. 347 ;  poetry  of,  333-334  5 

preachers  of,  343-344 
Right  and  Rights,  5,  231-233,  242, 

244,  245,  250,  254,  257,  260,  343 
Rowley,  Samuel   (d.    1633?),  and 

William  (i 585-1 642),  75 
Royal  Society,  346 


Satire,  63,  65,  106,  123,  134,  166, 

335.347.351 
Schelling,  Professor  Felix,  135 
Shakspere,    William   (i 564-1 61 6), 

7.  8,  30.  33'  35-44,  51-57,  6r,  64, 

76,  83,  88-90, 93,  95,  98,  163,  182 
Shirley,    James    (i  596-1 666),    78, 

97-99,  240 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip  (1554-1586),  17, 

20-26,  31,  98 
Sonnets,    24,    40,    41,    104,    297, 

3"-3r3- 
Southwell,   Robert   (1561  ?-i595), 

105 
Spenser,    Edmund    (i552?-i599), 

25-29,  104,  107-112,  132,  135, 

150-153,  288-290. 
Spenserian  poets,  128-135,  ^42 
Suckling,   Sir   John   (1609-1642), 

139 
Sylvester,     Joshua     (i  563-1 61 8), 
translator  of  Du  Bartas,  275,317 


Taylor,  Jeremy  (1613-1667),  203 
Thorndike,  Professor  A.  H.,  56,  S3 


360 


INDEX 


Tottels'  Miscellany,  10,  12 
Tourneur,  Cyril  (1575  ?-i626),  85 
Translation,  33,  65,  94,  160,  170, 

351 
Tribe  of  Ben,  136-142,  146 
Tyndale,  William  (d.  1536),  172 


Vaughan,  Henry  (1622-1695),  142 
Virgil  in  mediaeval  legend,  179,  182 


w 

Waller,  Edmund  (1606-1687),  136, 

146,  345 
Walton,    Izaak    (1593-1683),  120, 

203,  265,  339 
Webster,  John  (i58o?-i625  ?),  51, 

52.  85-93 
Wither,  George  (1588-1667),  131, 

133,  134,  265 


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